1 


■  in 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT   LOS  ANGELES 


MONEY  HUNGER 


A    BRIEF   STUDY    OF    COMMERCIAL 

IMMORALITY    IN   THE 

UNITED    STATES 


BY 

HENRY  A.  WISE  WOOD 

»  » 


. 


. ;  t        '  '  •        • 

1 


',-..•• 


G.   P.   PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON 

Cbe  fmicfcerbocfcec  iptees 
1908 


Copyright,  1907 

BY 

HENRY  A.   WISE  WOOD 


. 


TIbc  •fcntcfeerbocfter  press.  Hew  j?orb 


(0 

CO 


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a. 


MONEY  HUNGER 


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CHAPTER  I 


TPHE  recent  exposures  of  commercial 

w         immorality  existing  in  high  places, 

2  and  the  wide  difference  of  opinion 

Z  which  exists  concerning  the  degree 

£in  blameworthiness   of  the  acts  re- 

vealed,  point  to  the  conclusion  that  a 

rigidly  correct  attitude  in  business, 

and  a  clear  understanding  of  what 

ij  constitutes  it,  are  far  less  prevalent 

*  in  the  community  than  is  generally 

c  supposed. 

6     Large  numbers  of  people  are  pre- 
s  sumably  honest  in  thought  and  in 


^o 


/H>onc£  Ibunocr 


conduct,  but  there  is  no  established 
and  universally  accepted  code  of  cor- 
rect business  behavior — more  particu- 
larly with  respect  to  the  finer  shades 
of  commercial  integrity.  Instead, 
there  prevail  only  vague  notions  con- 
cerning the  correctness  of  many 
acts  which  lie  between  the  extremes 
of  acknowledged  theft  and  indubita- 
ble honesty. 

Recent  revelations  have  disclosed 
crimes  new  neither  in  kind  nor,  alto- 
gether, in  degree— for  the  same  prac- 
tices, although  often  exposed,  have 
existed  for  many  years  in  all  their 
variety.  But  the  general  spread  of 
commercial  immorality  among  all 
classes  of  our  people  is  of  such  com- 
paratively recent  occurrence  that  the 
writer  has  felt  constrained  to  isolate 
and  examine  the  causes  to  which  it 


/iDones  fnmoer 


may  be  referred,  and,  if  possible,  to 
discover  and  point  out  the  correctives 
which  in  time  may  be  expected  nat- 
urally to  assert  themselves,  as  well 
as  those  which  society  itself  obviously 
should  provide  and  apply. 

Towards  loose  commercial  morals 
there  has  grown  up  a  tolerance  on 
the  part  of  a  cynically  lenient  public 
which  has  steadily  sapped  the  char- 
acters of  men  in  positions  of  trust.  It 
can  hardly  be  denied  that  among  men 
of  this  class,  as  well  as  among  those 
whose  responsibilities  are  less,  the 
decay  of  probity  has  not  only  become 
epidemic,  but  is  infectious  as  well. 
Those  who  are  first  affected  seem 
easily  to  corrupt  their  associates,  un- 
til loose  interpretations  of  trust 
become  habitual  in  the  case  not 
alone   of  individuals,  but  of  widely 


/IDonet)  Ibunger 


extended    industrial    and     financial 
circles. 

The  recent  increase  in  the  size  and 
number  of  aggregations  of  capital, 
which  men  of  relaxed  morality  regard 
as  belonging  to  their  individual  own- 
ers only  in  an  abstract  sense,  has 
furnished  to  such  men  a  ready  oppor- 
tunity for  the  gratification  of  those 
predatory  instincts  which  are  inevita- 
bly coincident  with  the  decline  of 
personal  integrity. 

An  examination  of  the  prevalent 
forms  of  corruption  will  show  that 
these  embrace  what  may  be  termed 
intermediate  degrees  of  vice,  some 
of  them  approaching  more  close- 
ly than  others  to  that  fully  devel- 
oped form  known  to  the  law  as 
larceny.  While  most  of  them  es- 
cape the  statutes'  definition  of  crim- 


/IDonep  Tfounger 


inality,  nevertheless,  in  greater  or  less 
degree,  all  are  native  to  that  shady 
hinterland  of  crime  into  which  the 
hand  of  the  law  scarcely  as  yet  has 
shown  sufficient  cunning  to  reach. 

The  fact  that  the  community  at 
large  is  wanting  in  agreement  as  to 
what  constitutes  dishonorable  con- 
duct in  business  relations,  is  evi- 
denced by  the  various  ways  in  which 
questionable  commercial  transactions 
are  generally  regarded.  These  differ- 
ing points  of  view  range  from  the 
frank  defence  of  their  "  practical "  cor- 
rectness, through  toleration,  cynical 
indifference,  denunciation  born  of 
the  propensity  to  decry  "success' 
because  of  envy  or  malice,  to  con- 
demnation based  upon  a  clear  under- 
standing of  right  and  a  firmly  held 
attitude  of  rigid  personal    honesty. 


ZlDoncv?  Ibumjcr 


And  nowhere  is  there  prevalent  a 
relentless  determination  to  ostracize 
those    whose    acts    are    equivocal. 

As  to  how  such  a  diversity  of  opin- 
ion concerning  the  subject  of  com- 
mercial morality  can  exist  in  a 
compact  and  closely  intermingling  in- 
dustrial life,  is  at  first  glance  puzzling. 
But  further  examination  leaves  us 
wondering,  not  at  the  low  plane  upon 
which  we  conduct  the  practical  affairs 
of  life,  nor  at  our  varying  conceptions 
of  honor,  but  rather  that  our  habits 
are  not  worse  than  they  are,  and  that 
there  is  not  a  greater  confusion  of 
thought  than  in  reality  exists  as  to  the 
necessary  attributes  of  honesty. 

The  first  fact  to  be  considered  is  that 
we  are  not  a  homogeneous  commu- 
nity having  but  a  single  race  and 
commercial    history,    with    common 


llDoneg  Ibunger 


traditions  of  conduct  that  have  be- 
come instinctive.  On  the  contrary, 
we  are  heterogeneous  in  the  extreme, 
and  daily  are  undergoing  further 
modification  by  reason  of  the  new 
peoples  we  are  absorbing,  and  the 
tendencies  and  traditions  which  they 
call  upon  us  to  assimilate.  Nor  is  this 
all :  for  those  who  come  to  us  from 
any  given  country  are  usually  drawn 
from  its  various,  and  distinctively  dis- 
similar, classes,  each  of  which  has  its 
own  traditions  and  ethical  code. 

Here,  then,  are  gathered  and  re- 
leased men  from  every  clime,  subjects 
of  all  forms  of  government,  victims  of 
infinitely  various  degrees  of  restraint, 
of  injustice,  of  oppression,  endlessly 
diverse  as  to  ancestry,  temperament, 
personal  moral  habit,  and  commercial 
code.     By  us  all  are  welcomed  and 


/iDoncs?  "founder 


told  that  they  are  free  to  work  out, 
each  in  his  own  way  for  himself,  their 
individual  fortunes.  Is  it,  then,  to  be 
wondered  at  that  among  us  there  are 
so  many  paths  to  wealth  which  were 
unknown  to  the  old,  the  rigid  Anglo- 
Saxon  tenet  of  fair  play,  the  com- 
mon law  of  our  original  commercial 
inheritance? 

The  scorn  of  Europe  is  heavy  upon 
us  at  the  moment,  and  with  justice  ; 
but  let  Europe  reflect  that  we  are  its 
children  ;  that  in  us,  who  live  in  this 
land  of  loose  restraint,  have  come  to 
the  surface  the  moral  deformities 
of  its  own  civilization,  deformities 
which  it  fastened  ineradicably  upon 
our  ancestors.  For  immemorial  gen- 
erations, these,  in  their  various  envir- 
onments, were  denied  enlightenment, 
or  participation  in  any  but  the  lowest 


/iDonep  Ibunger 


forms  of  intellectual  activity,  and  often 
were  habituated  by  injustice  to  em- 
ploy the  defence  of  deceit.  Is  it 
strange  that  their  offspring,  whose 
progenitors  were  so  bred,  should 
be  morally  shaken  when  temptation 
points  the  way  to  stupendous  oppor- 
tunities, hitherto  beyond  their  furthest 
horizon  of  anticipation,  and  promises 
that  they  may  be  embraced  without 
thought  of  punishment  by  force — the 
only  deterrent  of  which  their  antece- 
dents have  left  them  in  fear? 

It  would  be  natural,  indeed,  to  as- 
sume that  we  have  been  at  pains  to 
provide  ourselves  with  highly  organ- 
ized educational  machinery,  whose 
primary  function  is  to  reshape  and 
unify  the  heterogeneous  materials 
with  which  it  has  to  deal,  by  bringing 
their  numberless  instinctive  tenden- 


to  /iDonev?  Ibunocr 

cies  into  rigid  conformity  with  such  a 
standard  ethical  code  as  shall  insure 
the  creation  of  a  uniform  type  of  ac- 
ceptable citizenship.  And  we  should 
expect  to  find  our  instructors  giving 
particular  attention  to  the  work  of 
formally  drilling  our  youth  in  a  science 
of  honesty,  so  that  they  may  be  pro- 
vided with  a  healthful  gauge  of  con- 
duct by  which  to  govern  their  future 
activities.  But,  strange  as  it  may 
seem — and  this  is  the  second  fact  to 
be  observed — there  is  wholly  absent 
from  our  educational  system  formal 
instruction  with  respect  to  the  minu- 
tiae of  what,  on  the  one  hand,  con- 
stitutes commercial  integrity,  and,  on 
the  other,  commercial  vice. 

This  may  seem  a  startling  charge  to 
bring  against  the  educators  of  to-day. 
Nevertheless  it  is  justified,  as  will  ap- 


flDoneE  "Ibunger 


ii 


pear  upon  a  critical  comparison  of 
what  actually  is  taught  in  our  schools 
with  the  insidiously  disguised  moral 
questions,  fraught  with  profit  or  loss, 
which  daily  arise  to  confound  the 
average  man  of  business.  It  will 
then  be  seen  that  modern  schooling 
has  failed  to  keep  pace  with  the 
rapidly  increasing  intricacies  of  mod- 
ern commercial  intercourse,  to  the  end 
that  by  every  man  wrong  may  be 
known  and  felt  to  be  wrong,  what- 
ever the  cleverness  of  its  technical 
disguise.  That  is  to  say,  neither  the 
substance  nor  the  method  of  modern 
education  puts  into  the  hands  of  a 
man  an  instrument  of  precision  by 
the  application  of  which  every  form 
of  chicanery  or  misdealing  instantly 
may  be  recognized  as  immoral,  how- 
ever it  may  be  hid  in  a  cleverly  con- 


i2  flDoncvj  Ibunger 


ceived  maze  of  exculpatory  reasoning. 
Nor,  which  is  of  more  vital  impor- 
tance, does  it  drill  into  men  a  love  for 
straight  dealing  upon  the  finer  points 
of  business,  and  a  stoical  willingness 
to  suffer  loss  rather  than  to  shade  in 
ever  so  delicate  a  degree  their  concept 
of  right. 

Nothing  is  done  in  a  scientifically 
purposeful  way  to  establish  in  the  in- 
dividual a  standard  of  rigid  personal 
rectitude  of  which  he  may  become 
conscious  and  proud ;  a  standard 
which  he  shall  be  willing  to  carry  into 
life,  as  men  carry  their  patriotism  into 
battle,  and  according  to  the  dictates  of 
which  he  shall  unflinchingly  conduct 
his  activities,  whether  their  result  be 
failure  or  success.  It  is  obvious  that 
if  men  are  to  be  made  proud  of  being 
upright,  rather  than  of  being  rich;  if 


flboncy  Ibunger  i3 

rectitude  is  to  be  honored  above 
wealth  or  position,  then  the  neces- 
sary ideals  must  be  bred  into  our 
youth, — and  such  work  manifestly  is 
in  the  province  of  education. 


CHAPTER  II 

TT  must  not  be  overlooked  that  the 
home,  the  church,  the  play- 
ground, and  the  press,  no  less  than  the 
schools,  have  their  educational  func- 
tions and  responsibilities.  The  im- 
press made  by  each  on  the  social  life 
of  our  time  determines  the  direction 
given  to  the  ambitions  and  the  nature 
of  the  moral  qualities  of  our  youth. 

If  in  the  home  there  exist  ignoble 
ideals  of  truth,  and  of  conduct ;  if  the 
questionable  acts  of  conspicuous  per- 
sons are  condoned,  or  regarded  with 
amusement  and  cynical  tolerance,  it 
can  hardly  be  but  that  the  boy  reared 
therein  should  go  out  into  life  morally 

14 


/iDonep  ibunger  15 

deformed,  and  ready  to  take  those 
easy  paths  to  wealth  upon  which  he 
has  been  taught  to  look  without 
repugnance. 

And  so  with  the  church,  when, 
through  the  pressure  of  its  material 
necessities,  it  accustoms  itself  to  chaf- 
fer with  the  very  principles  of  truth 
and  right,  of  which  it  assumes  to  be 
the  infallible  preceptor.  What,  in- 
deed, must  be  said  of  its  influence 
when  it  suavely  waves  with  palliative 
gesture  the  finger  of  scorn  and  de- 
nunciation which  it  should  fearlessly 
thrust  into  the  face  of  every  man  who 
steals  ? 

The  playground,  and  the  tradi- 
tions which  it  inculcates,  present 
for  examination  another,  perhaps  our 
healthiest,  phase  of  formative  influ- 
ence.    Here,  possibly,  is  contained  a 


1 6  /Bones  Ibunoer 

suggestion  of  the  very  inspiration 
needed  to  rectify  the  tortuous  pro- 
cesses of  our  commercial  thought. 
Upon  it,  for  the  first  time,  and  often 
for  the  last,  the  American  boy  grasps 
the  principles  of  fair  play,  of  the 
voluntary  equalization  of  oppor- 
tunity; and  learns,  and  loves,  to 
play  the  game,  whatever  be  the  bur- 
dens laid  upon  him  by  its  regula- 
tions. The  strong  freely  accept  their 
handicap,  while  the  weak  fearlessly 
contend  in  the  consciousness  of  their 
equality  under  the  rules.  The  purity 
of  the  sport  is  as  jealously  guarded 
by  those  who  are  ablest,  and  who 
therefore  most  heavily  suffer  its 
limitations,  as  by  the  frail  and  unskil- 
ful for  whose  protection  limitations 
are  imposed.  Such  is  the  chivalry  of 
sport. 


/IDonc£  Ibunoer  17 

But  a  single  example  need  be  given 
to  illustrate  how  far  the  code  of  sport, 
in  its  inexorable  workings,  transcends 
the  laws  of  conduct  which  are  sup- 
posed to  govern  our  commercial  in- 
tercourse. Upon  sitting  down  at 
a  game  of  cards  the  first  business  of 
the  participants  is  to  agree  upon  the 
rules  which  shall  govern  their  play. 
This  having  been  done,  so  long  as 
the  rules  are  observed  the  oppor- 
tunities of  all  will  be  equal,  and  the 
rights  of  each  secure;  while  the  right- 
ful elements  of  play,  which  are  skill, 
acumen,  and  chance,  become  the  sole 
considerations  of  the  game.  If,  how- 
ever, having  tacitly  accepted  the  rules, 
a  player  secretly  practise  infractions 
of  them,  the  element  of  chance  is 
at  once  destroyed,  the  calcula- 
tions of  his  opponents  are  thwarted, 


is  /iDone^  ibunoer 

and,    unwittingly,  they  become  his 
victims. 

Now  mark  the  punishment  of  such 
a  player :  When  discovered,  or  even 
suspected,  he  is  summarily  branded, 
is  thrust  from  his  club,  is  ostracized  by 
society,  and  becomes  a  marked  man, 
with  whom  only  men  of  his  own 
stamp  knowingly  will  have  gaming 
relations,  or  any  avoidable  relations 
whatever.  And  this  notwithstanding 
the  fact  that  the  law  which  designates 
the  penalty  is  not  to  be  found  upon 
statute  books,  nor  for  its  application 
requires  the  intervention  of  the  State's 
machinery  of  justice.  It  is  not  without 
reason  that  men  have  grown  to  trust 
the  word  of  a  sport.  What  a  scathing 
condemnation,  indeed,  of  the  flimsy 
boast  of  current  commercial  trust- 
worthiness, this  very  phrase  implies. 


/IDone\?  ftunocr  19 

When  compared  with  the  common 
honesty  of  our  play,  how  glaringly 
the  practices  of  our  commercial  ac- 
tivities stand  out.  The  man  who 
cheats  at  the  one  is  instantly  cash- 
iered, while  the  individual  who  sub- 
orns legislators  and  executives,  who 
misuses  for  his  own  gain  the  funds 
of  others  held  by  him  in  trust,  who 
obtains  for  himself  illegal  advantage, 
who  evades  his  just  debts,  or  by  mis- 
representation obtains  value  without 
giving  adequate  return, — such  a  one, 
if  his  operations  be  conducted  with 
skill  and  attended  by  success,  may 
walk  scot-free  under  the  xg'is  of  the 
law,  may  move  with  honor  in  the 
exclusive  paths  of  our  social  life, 
and  hiss,  without  fear  of  being  put 
to  shame,  the  welcher  who  is  kicked 
from  the  track!     It  is  indeed  a  curious 


20  /lDonc\?  Ibunoer 


thing  that  the  love  of  fair  play,  of  the 
equalization  of  opportunity,  which  is 
the  vital  force  moving  within  our 
sports,  should  stir  so  feebly  in  the 
serious  work  of  our  lives. 


CHAPTER  III 

|T  may  generally  be  said  that  the 
average  man  is  no  better  than  he 
is  compelled  to  be  by  the  prevailing 
sentiment  of  the  community  in  which 
he  lives ;  and  more  particularly  by 
that  of  the  class  to  which  he  belongs. 
Therefore,  while  a  community  may 
properly  be  absolved  from  the  odium 
of  such  isolated  crimes  as  sporadically 
occur  in  its  midst,  it  cannot  be  ac- 
quitted of  the  charge  that  it  sug- 
gestively instigates  such  of  the 
questionable  practices  of  its  own 
members  as  it  persistently  neglects 
to  discountenance  and  suppress. 
This  being  the  case,   an    agency 

21 


22  /Ifeonep  Ibimocr 


such  as  the  newspaper,  which  in- 
forms and  standardizes  public  opinion, 
cannot  escape  accountability  for  pre- 
valent wrong-doing.  And  no  study  of 
the  times  is  adequate  which  does  not 
attempt  an  analytic  examination  of  the 
tendencies  of  that  formidable  power 
— journalism.  To  consider  success- 
fully the  newspaper  its  component 
parts  first  must  be  segregated,  so 
that  the  influence  exerted  by  each 
upon  its  policy,  and  through  its  pol- 
icy upon  the  newspaper's  constitu- 
ency, may  be  known  and  measured. 
The  presentation  of  news  em- 
braces questions  of  its  selection, 
amplification,  coloring,  and  display 
— each  of  which  in  every  case  is 
determined  by  the  class  of  readers 
it  is  sought  to  please,  and  by  the 
nature  of  the  other  policies  involved, 


flDonep  ibunacr  23 


which  shall  hereafter  be  referred  to. 
If,  for  instance,  a  newspaper  seeks  its 
clientage  among  the  lower  classes, 
where  the  greatest  numbers  abound, 
its  news  items  will  be  drawn  from 
the  sensational  events  and  gross  hap- 
penings of  the  day.  They  will  be 
padded  to  satisfy  a  hunger  for  detail, 
colored  in  substance  or  headline  to 
suit  the  appetites  or  prejudices  of  their 
consumers,  or  the  purposes  of  their 
publisher,  and  displayed  in  the  order 
of  their  ability  to  startle,  rather  than 
in  that  of  their  intrinsic  importance 
in  the  progress  of  substantial  events. 
As  its  contents  are  selected  for  the 
measure  of  excitement  afforded,  rather 
than  for  accuracy  and  worth  of  in- 
formation, the  stimulus  applied  by 
such  a  paper  will  sway  the  emotions, 
and  therefore    the    passions,   of  its 


24  flDonev?  Ifounoer 

readers  rather  than  their  logical  facul- 
ties. Its  methods  approximate  those 
of  the  mountebank,  who  resorts  to 
any  pretext  in  order  to  gather  a 
throng  whose  credulity  he  may  ex- 
ploit. Indeed,  so  for  in  this  direction 
may  this  type  of  journal  go  that  its 
function  becomes  that  of  an  enter- 
taining juggler  of  news  and  opinion, 
whose  sole  purpose  is  the  acquisition 
of  gain  or  power. 

At  the  other  extreme  is  to  be  found 
the  publisher  who  makes  his  appeal 
to  the  intellectual  side  of  his  com- 
munity. His  items  of  news  are  cho- 
sen for  their  bearing  upon  the  larger 
questions  of  the  day.  There  appears 
in  his  paper  less  local  and  more  gen- 
eral information,  but  both  are  con- 
fined to  the  statement  of  obtainable 
facts:  while  such  conclusions  as  he 


/IDonep  Dunger  25 

believes  should  be  drawn  therefrom 
appear  neither  as  biased  matter  sur- 
reptitiously injected  into  the  items 
themselves,  nor  as  distortions  of  fact 
woven  into  their  headlines,  but  else- 
where as  avowed  interpretations  of 
news.  In  such  a  paper  the  manner  of 
displaying  news  follows  the  order 
of  its  selection,  precedence  being  given 
to  that  of  most  substantial  worth,  to 
which  are  subordinated  other  happen- 
ings of  the  day,  however  sensational 
may  be  their  qualities. 

Between  these  opposite  extremes 
many  shades  in  the  treatment  of  news 
will  be  found  to  exist.  A  careful  ex- 
amination, however,  will  disclose  the 
fact  that  each  is  the  result  of  deliber- 
ate adjustment,  made  by  a  publisher 
to  suit  the  taste  of  a  particular  clien- 
tele of  readers,  or  the  requirements  of 


26  jflDoncB  ftungcr 

an  interest  which  he  conceives  it  to 
be  necessary  for  him  to  serve. 

That  a  man  who  is  a  merchant  must 
hold  towards  his  customers  a  concila- 
tory  attitude,  is  a  maxim  which  gov- 
erns the  policy  of  the  advertising 
manager  of  a  journalistic  enterprise,  no 
less  than  that  of  other  business  men. 
But  the  very  nature  of  its  peculiar  of- 
fice places  the  newspaper  under  an 
especial  obligation  to  serve  faithfully 
its  readers ;  and,  where  the  public's 
welfare  is  concerned,  to  be  watchful 
and  active  upon  its  behalf.  Thus,  when 
the  interests  of  the  advertiser  and 
those  of  the  reader  come  into  conflict, 
it  is  for  the  publisher  to  determine 
upon  which  side,  or  just  where  be- 
tween, his  course  shall  lie. 

He  may  elect  to  consider  the  inter- 
ests of  his  advertisers  as  of  greater 


ZlDonep  ibunger 


importance  to  him  than  those  of  his 
reading  constituency,  or  of  the  com- 
munity at  large,  and  in  conformity 
therewith  he  may  so  adjust  his  news 
and  editorial  policies  that  nothing  det- 
rimental to  his  advertising  clientele 
shall  appear  in  his  paper.  Or,  his  du- 
ties to  reader  and  public  may  seem  to 
him  to  require  that  his  news-pages 
and  the  expressed  opinions  of  his  pa- 
per shall  so  surely  be  safeguarded 
from  the  influence  of  those  who  buy 
his  space,  that  he  may  freely  and 
without  bias  give  the  news  of  the 
day,  and  fearlessly  comment  upon  it. 
In  choosing  the  course  last  men- 
tioned one  publisher  may  be  gov- 
erned solely  by  considerations  of  self- 
interest,  believing  that  to  hold  his 
advertising  patronage  the  conserva- 
tion of  the  extent    and   quality  of 


28  /n>one\?  Ibunger 

his  circulation  alone  is  necessary ; 
that  a  policy  of  fairness  towards  his 
readers  will  best  insure  their  satisfac- 
tion and,  consequently,  the  value  of 
his  space.  Another  may  preserve  the 
purity  of  his  paper  for  none  but  con- 
scientious reasons,  and  be  willing,  so 
that  he  may  well  serve  what  he  con- 
ceives to  be  the  public's  interests,  to 
assume  the  penalties  attached  to  an 
aggressive  campaign  against  the  injuri- 
ous practices  even  of  important  adver- 
tising interests.  In  either  case  the 
position  taken  is  directly  opposed  to 
that  of  the  publisher  who  shapes  the 
news  and  editorial  policies  of  his  pa- 
per to  suit  his  advertisers.  Between 
these  extremes  will  be  found  pub- 
lishers who  are  influenced  in  vari- 
ous ways  by  the  fact  that  the  chief 
revenue  of  a  newspaper  is  derived 
from  the  sale  of  its  space. 


CHAPTER  IV 

r^vEEPLY  immersed  in  his  own  af- 
*-^  fairs,  the  casual  newspaper  reader 
obtains  little  more  than  a  fragmentary 
idea  of  the  news  of  the  day.  Having 
neither  time  nor  facilities  for  ascertain- 
ing the  facts  which  must  be  known  in 
order  that  any  question  or  event  may 
fully  be  grasped,  the  reader,  if  left  to 
himself,  must  necessarily  draw  erro- 
neous conclusions.  Therefore,  in  or- 
der that  the  reader  may  be  correctly 
informed,  the  editorial  page  exists, 
and  therein  the  editor  marshals  and 
interprets  his  facts. 

But   in  the   editorial    rooms  of  a 

newspaper,  as  well  as  in  its  other 

29 


3o  flDoneg  t)unget 

departments,  it  is  the  policy  of  its 
publisher  which  prevails.  It  is  he 
who  determines  whether  the  views 
prepared  shall  be  uncolored  interpre- 
tations of  news,  or  opinions  penned 
without  bias,  in  fair  and  judicial 
spirit,  or  the  reverse.  He  may  per- 
mit the  prejudices  of  his  readers,  his 
own  financial  or  political  interests,  or 
the  enterprises  of  his  friends  to  govern 
the  expressed  opinions  of  his  paper. 
Or,  regardless  of  any  of  these,  he  may 
insist  that  his  editorial  columns  shall 
discuss  with  frankness  and  honesty 
every  question  of  the  day.  In  the  one 
case  he  may  direct  his  editors  to  write 
that  which  his  readers  wish  to  hear, 
or  what  his  own  material  interests 
dictate  they  shall  be  taught  to  believe; 
or,  in  the  other, the  things  in  good  faith 
which  they  should  frankly  be  told. 


/iDoncv?  ibungcr  31 

It  cannot  too  often  be  reiterated  that 
the  press  holds  a  peculiar  office  with 
respect  to  the  public,  for  it  is  one, 
indeed,  in  which  a  curious  psycho- 
logical phenomenon  is  involved.  No 
one  will  assert  that  superstition  is 
dead ;  nor  that  from  the  minds  of 
even  the  educated  there  has  wholly 
been  driven  the  old,  involuntary  thrill 
of  awe  which  rises  in  response  to 
the  stimulus  of  a  mystery  suddenly 
confronted.  The  effect  which  is  born 
of  an  obscure  cause  still  challenges 
those  of  our  emotions  which  grow 
out  of  the  imaginative  rather  than 
the  rational  faculties. 

As  it  was  centuries  ago,  so  it  still  is 
with  us.  The  priestess  of  the  Del- 
phian oracle  was  but  the  visible 
agency  through  which  were  con- 
veyed   to   the    people    what    they 


flDoncv?  Ifounoer 


believed  to  be  the  thoughts  of  a 
mysterious  and  omniscient  mind, 
enthroned  beyond  an  otherwise  im- 
penetrable veil.  To  the  uninitiated 
of  to-day  similarly  there  are  conveyed 
a  myriad  stimuli,  through  that  strange 
thing  the  newspaper.  These  are  born 
they  know  not  where,  are  marshalled 
for  their  weal  or  woe  by  minds  whose 
identities  are  effectually  hid  from 
them,  and  are  uttered  by  pens  they 
never  see  — all  as  mysteriously  as 
ever  moved  the  oracle  of  the  temple 
at  Delphi  in  ancient  Greece.  Identi- 
cally in  kind,  if  not  in  degree,  we 
have  reproduced  in  the  press  of 
modern  times  the  old  phenomena 
of  the  oracular  control  of  multi- 
tudes: for  undeniably  the  newspaper 
speaks  to  the  throng  with  more  than 
the  voice  of  a  man. 


flDonev?  ibunger  33 


Indeed,  nothing  could  better  illus- 
trate the  law  of  permutation  than  the 
newspaper,  for  its  weight  in  the  coun- 
cils of  a  community  is  greater  than 
that  of  the  sum  of  its  parts.  There  are, 
for  instance,  no  twelve  citizens — nor, 
in  fact,  are  there  twelve  hundred — 
in  the  city  of  New  York,  who  collec- 
tively as  persons  could  wield  the 
power  exercised  by  a  dozen  of  its 
newspapers.  Yet  these  are  merely 
the  personal  possessions  of  as  many 
individuals,  who  alone  may  say  in 
what  manner  shall  be  put  into  play 
the  incalculable  forces  of  suggestion 
and  stimulation  which  lie  in  the 
bowels  of  these  new-found  and  tre- 
mendous engines  for  the  control  of 
thought. 


CHAPTER  V 

OAVING  gained  an  understanding 
of  the  elements  which  comprise 
the  newspaper,  of  the  nature  and  ex- 
tent of  its  powers,  and,  in  some  meas- 
ure, of  the  influences  by  which  its 
publisher  is  beset,  it  is  now  possible 
somewhat  more  accurately  to  esti- 
mate the  degree  in  which  the  press  is 
responsible  for  the  commercial  im- 
morality of  the  times;  and  to  ascer- 
tain which  of  its  tendencies  have 
fostered  corruption,  which  have  acted 
to  deter  its  development,  and  what 
has  been  the  genesis  and  the  sustain- 
ing force  of  each. 
At  any  time  in  the  history  of  an  in- 

34 


/lDone£  Ibunger  35 


dividual  he  may  be  expressed  by  the 
following  formula :  The  sum  of  his 
inherited  tendencies,  modified  by  so 
much  of  his  environment  as  he  has 
assimilated,  and  shaped  by  the  for- 
tuitous circumstances  of  his  life,  will 
represent  his  character.  He  will  de- 
velop, as  a  rule,  in  the  direction  of  his 
inclinations ;  but,  while  these  will 
largely  determine  the  elements  which 
unconsciously  he  elects  to  absorb  from 
his  surroundings,  nevertheless,  the 
standard  of  his  environment — the 
nature  of  the  choice  offered  him  — 
whether  it  be  high  or  low,  useful  or 
trivial,  stimulative  of  one  set  of  ideals 
or  of  another,  usually  will  fashion 
him  after  its  own  kind. 

This  being  so,  the  things  which 
make  up  the  daily  aggregate  of  his 
impressions  become  of  prime  impor- 


36  /iDoneB  "Ibunoer 


tance  in  the  study  of  a  man's  habits 
of  thought  and  action  ;  and  upon  his 
commercial  standards,  no  less  than 
upon  those  of  his  social  life,  they  will 
be  found  to  have  had  their  effect. 

Except  with  respect  to  matters  that 
come  immediately  within  their  limited 
personal  scope,  the  newspaper  is  the 
principal  window  through  which  most 
people  look  out  upon  life ;  and  it  is 
from  the  daily  panorama  offered  by 
his  favorite  journal  that  the  average 
man  gains  his  knowledge  of  what  is 
being  done  in  the  world,  and  of  what 
the  world  thinks  of  it. 

Men  are  gregarious  :  not  only  do 
they  strive  to  herd  together,  but  also 
to  dress,  to  act,  and  to  think  alike. 
The  contempt  implied  by  the  appel- 
lation crank,  as  applied  to  one  who 
differs  in  any  one  of  these  respects 


/iDonep  tmnger  37 

from  his  neighbors,  and  the  fact  that 
men  shrink  from  incurring  it,  serve  to 
illustrate  not  only  how  sensitive  men 
are  to  the  opinions  of  others,  but  that 
a  distinct  penalty  attaches  to  any 
infraction  of  accepted  standards  of 
thought  or  of  conduct.  So  strong, 
indeed,  is  this  tendency  that  crimes 
are  known  to  have  been  committed 
by  men  who  rather  feared  by  refusal 
to  incur  the  contempt  of  their  fellows, 
than  by  compliance  to  risk  the  inflic- 
tion of  legal  penalties. 

Thus,  a  medium  like  the  press, 
with  its  power  to  reflect  the  opin- 
ions of  a  community,  may,  by  the 
very  nature  of  its  use  of  that  power, 
also  modify  those  opinions.  Justly, 
therefore,  the  press  may  be  called 
a  keeper  of  the  public  conscience  ; 
and,  as  such,  in  the  measure  of  the 

I 


3 


8  /iDonep  Ibunger 


influence  it  enjoys,  should  it  be  held 
to  account  for  the  immoral  idiosyn- 
crasies of  public  behavior. 

The  press  is  an  institution  no  less 
than  the  home,  the  school,  the  church, 
or  the  state;  and  it  scarcely  will  be 
denied  that  its  influence  is  greater 
than  that  of  any  of  these.  The  ques- 
tion then  arises,  In  what  particulars 
have  the  activities  of  this  newest 
of  institutions  affected  our  standards 
of  commercial  morality  ? 

That  function  of  the  newspaper  hav- 
ing the  most  profound  influence  upon 
the  popular  character  is  exerted  in 
its  role  of  intimate  friend,  wherein  it 
comes  into  close  and  daily  touch  with 
the  lives  of  the  people,  and  sympa- 
thetically deals  with  their  troubles  and 
joys,  their  hopes  and  their  fears.  And 
it  is  most  often  through  the  channels 


flDoneB  Ibunger  39 

opened  by  this  relationship  that  stim- 
uli are  introduced  which  play  inju- 
riously upon  the  public's  morals, 
through  its  insatiable  appetite  for  in- 
formation concerning  matters  of  so- 
called  human  interest.  Here  one 
may  usually  look  for  the  causes  of 
popular  ailment. 

The  bearing  of  this  upon  the  relaxed 
commercial  morality  of  the  times  will 
more  clearly  appear  when  the  ideals 
set  daily  before  the  people  are  ex- 
amined, and  the  nature  of  the  am- 
bitions which  they  vitalize  are 
understood ;  when  it  is  seen  how 
greatly  in  the  popular  mind  the  scale 
of  relative  values — the  sense  of  pro- 
portion, which  makes  up  the  perspec- 
tive of  life— is  distorted  by  the  press. 

It  is  of  the  nature  of  their  gregarious 
propensity  that  men  should  strive  for 


4o  /lDone\>  hunger 


things  not  so  much  because  of  their 
intrinsic  worth  as  because  they  are 
valued  by  other  men  ;  that  they 
should  love  the  stamp  of  the  world's 
approval  to  be  upon  those  things  for 
which  they  contend,  and  that  the 
more  patent  the  stamp  the  more  val- 
iant should  be  their  struggle  to  se- 
cure that  to  which  it  is  affixed.  This 
thing,  or  that,  often  needs  only  to  be 
widely  spoken  of  as  popular  in  order 
that  it  may  instantly  become  so — for 
few  men  have  the  power  to  resist  the 
contagion  of  the  chase,  once  it  is  be- 
gun by  the  throng,  however  small 
may  be  the  value  of  the  object  after 
which  it  rushes. 

Thus  is  to  be  explained  the  impulse 
which  arouses  in  men  the  desire  to 
emulate  those  who  have  achieved 
whatever  at  the  moment  the  public 


/IDoney  Ifounger  4i 


may  happen  to  acclaim  success ;  and, 
likewise,  the  fact  that  as  the  popular 
estimate  of  the  applicability  of  the 
word  success  to  the  achievement  of 
any  given  project  may  fluctuate,  so 
also  will  vary  the  intensity  of  the 
desire  of  men  to  encompass  it. 

It  is  safe  to  assert  that  whatever 
kind  of  activity  best  serves  to  bring 
men  prominently  into  the  public's 
eye,  and  to  secure  for  them  the  largest 
measure  of  the  public's  adulation, 
will  most  assiduously  be  practised. 
If  their  world  honor  intellectual  de- 
velopment, men  will  strive  to  become 
thinkers ;  if  art  be  the  cry  of  their 
neighbors,  painters,  sculptors,  and 
architects  instantly  will  arise ;  if  it 
be  militarism,  throngs  will  besiege 
the  enlistment  bureau,  and  the  in- 
vention of  materials   for    war   will 


42  fiDonev  lounger 


prodigeously  increase  ;  while  if  it  be 
the  tawdry  exploits  of  the  rich  that 
fill  the  popular  imagination,  then  the 
average  man  will  plan  his  life  solely 
with  a  view  to  the  acquirement  of 
wealth. 

Beneath  the  arts  of  portrayal  lies  a 
law  of  essential  verity.  Lacking  the 
observance  of  this,  neither  color  nor 
form  can  be  made  to  convey  accurate 
knowledge  of  the  nature  or  worth  of 
anything.  Whatever  may  be  its  me- 
dium, interpretation  should  represent 
truth  ;  and  to  do  this  it  must  con- 
serve the  integrity  of  values,— a  pre- 
cept as  indispensable  to  the  artistry 
of  news-editing  a  paper  as  to  that  of 
sculpture,  of  painting,  of  architecture. 

It  is,  however,  through  disregard  of 
the  necessity  for  preserving  correct 
values,  in  its  presentation  of  the  per- 


/iDonep  UDunger  43 

spective  of  the  day's  news,  that  the 
newspaper  does  its  greatest  injury 
to  the  standards  of  popular  thought. 
The  most  serious  consequences  are 
involved  when  it  serves  to  distort  the 
moral  vision  of  the  community,  by 
suggestively  throwing  into  unwar- 
rantable prominence  spectacular  hap- 
penings of  little  worth,  or  of  harmful 
nature,  and  by  thrusting  into  obscurity 
the  real,  the  healthful,  the  vitalizing 
things  of  life.  Is  it  to  be  wondered 
at  that  so  many  of  our  people  have 
lost,  and  that  most  have  never  ac- 
quired, an  acute  sense  of  what  con- 
stitutes theft  ?  Morning  and  evening 
they  have  been  blinded  to  the  moral 
issues  involved  in  the  struggle  for 
wealth  by  dazzling  accounts  of  its 
possibilities  when  won;  while  the  at- 
titude of  their  favorite  journals  has 


44  /iDone^  lounger 

been  one  of  consistently  respectful 
and  attentive  adulation  toward  those 
who  have  prospered— however  repre- 
hensible may  have  been  the  methods 
which  led  to  their  success. 

As  the  grosser  forms  of  crime  are 
propagated  by  the  publicity  given  to 
the  exploits  of  criminals,  so,  also,  are 
its  more  delicate  forms  multiplied  by 
the  published  exploits  of  those  who 
successfully  practise  them;  and  the 
newspaper's  exaltation  of  wealth 
however  it  may  have  been  ac- 
quired, and  of  its  attendant  spec- 
tacular expressions,  at  last  finds  its 
legitimate  offspring  in  a  public  opinion 
which  laughs  at  the  word  graft,  and 
amiably  tolerates  those  who,  be- 
ing the  perfect  flower  of  a  system 
born  of  such  opinion,  openly  practise 
corruption. 


/IDonq?  Dunoer  45 

In  considering  the  attitude  of  the 
press,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that 
those  who  make  up  its  personnel  are 
part  of  the  very  public  they  serve; 
that,  by  association,  they  are  apt  to 
share  with  it  identical  ideals,  and  that 
the  material  reward  of  their  calling 
requires  that  they  shall  scent  and  fol- 
low the  easiest  paths  to  their  public's 
desire, — paths  which  scarcely  may 
be  said  to  lead  to  the  objectives  of 
self-restraint  and  moral  betterment. 
Excepting  a  small,  though  earnest, 
minority,  our  journalists  give  no  sign 
of  their  perception  of  the  need  of  rais- 
ing the  public's  point  of  view;  nor  of 
their  obligation,  always  implied  and 
often  expressed,  to  shield  their  readers 
from  mischief,  and  to  better  their 
state  if  they  can.  On  the  contrary,  it 
seems    to    be    consistent    with    the 


46  jflDoncE  Ibunocr 


ethics  of  modern  journalism  that  the 
newspaper  should  assume  the  guise 
of  friend,  or  guardian,  in  order  the 
more  easily  to  be  able  to  exploit  its 
public  for  private  ends. 

Thus  it  may  be  said  that  no  news- 
paper run  solely  for  profit  or  power 
is  likely  to  deny  its  public  anything, 
however  clearly  aware  of  the  fact  it 
may  be  that  the  fiber  of  a  community, 
upon  the  strengthening  of  which 
should  be  expended  the  best  thought 
of  every  serious  writer,  assuredly  will 
relax  and  disintegrate,  as  will  that  of 
any  individual,  beneath  unbridled  in- 
dulgence. Therefore  are  the  people 
so  often  permitted  to  set  the  pace,  and 
choose  the  means,  of  their  own  de- 
bauching ;  while  the  newspaper,  pan- 
dering meanwhile  to  the  passions 
which  thus  it  most  easily  has  aroused, 


/n>one\?  Ibunger  47 

skilfully  accomplishes  upon  the  pub- 
lic its  own  particular  purpose.  In  this 
way,  for  instance,  circulations  are 
built  up,  advertisers  secured,  the  fi- 
nancial aims  of  powerful  interests 
served,  or  the  political  ambitions  of 
men  realized.  In  substance  it  is  a 
practice  analogous  to  that  of  the 
monarch  who  lavishly  provides  for 
his  subjects  the  means  of  debauch- 
ery, so  that  his  dubious  projects  may 
secure  their  support,  or  escape  their 
opposition. 

Other  evils,  as  well,  lie  at  the  door 
of  the  press,  but  being  among  the  ef- 
fects of  prevalent  commercial  immor- 
ality, rather  than  among  its  causes, 
but  one  of  them— and  that  merely  by 
way  of  illustration — need  be  cited : 
the  deliberate  practice  by  the  news- 
paper of  fraud  upon  its  readers  for  the 


48  /IDoncv?  Ibunger 


profit  to  be  got  out  of  certain  of  its 
advertisers.  By  lending  its  influence 
to  protect  from  government  regula- 
tion and  control  interests  which  sell 
through  its  columns  injurious  wares 
—and  by  knowingly  affording  them 
space — it  deliberately  puts  (often  a 
mortal)  injury  upon  those  who  trust 
it.  By  sharing  the  earnings  of  this 
species  of  advertiser,  who  robs  the 
needy  both  of  pittance  and  health, 
the  newspaper  ruthlessly  participates 
in  what  is  the  cruellest  form  of  gain. 
Finally,  it  may  be  said  that  the 
press  fatally  reflects  satisfaction  with 
the  worst  influences  of  the  times,  and 
thus  aids  in  maintaining  the  commer- 
cial profligacy  of  the  day;  and  that, 
notwithstanding  the  enormity  of 
recent  disclosures,  and  despite  the 
academic  horror  which  occasionally 


flDones  ibunger  49 

Hashes  from  (only)  its  editorial 
columns,  it  evinces  no  wide-spread 
and  substantial  wish  or  purpose 
to  systematically  compel  a  better- 
ment. Until  there  shall  have  taken 
place  a  publishers'  arousal  to  the  dan- 
gers of  the  situation,  and  from  the 
counting-room  itself  there  shall  have 
issued  the  command  for  the  applica- 
tion of  deep-reaching  remedies  to  be 
heroically  applied,  it  will  be  safe  still 
to  consider  the  public  as  morally 
asleep,  and  at  the  mercy  of  the  army 
of  citizen-criminals  which  its  own 
somnolence  has  bred. 

But  so  soon  as  it  shall  have  be- 
come the  settled  policy  of  the  most 
influential  portion  of  the  press,  sys- 
tematically and  with  relentless  vigor 
to  make  chicanery  and  misdealing 
in  all   of  their   forms    odious,   then 


50  /Ifconep  Ibunoer 


there  may  be  expected  to  arise  a 
public  sentiment  so  inimical  to  com- 
mercial immorality  that  the  practise 
of  it  will  wholly  be  relegated  to  the 
criminal  classes  which  are  professedly 
such. 

As  is  a  man's  power  so  also  should 
be  measured  his  responsibility  ;  and 
the  voice  which  cries  from  within  that 
eerie  thing,  the  newspaper,  towards 
which  at  every  sun  a  whole  world 
turns  for  knowledge  of  itself  and  guid- 
ance, should  be  held  for  the  wisdom 
and  honesty  of  its  words  to  an  ac- 
countability inexorably  proportioned 
to  its  sway. 


CHAPTER  VI 

HHHE  following  beliefs  seem  to  be 
ineradicable  from  the  public  mind 
as  it  is  at  present  constituted:  That  the 
acquisition  of  physical  property  is 
in  itself  a  sufficient  and  legitimate 
object  for  all  effort ;  that  there  is 
honor  in  the  mere  possession  of 
riches,  while  the  lack  of  them  requires 
an  attitude  of  apologetic  humility; 
that  wealth  is  more  desirable  than 
intellectual  acquisition,  because  lead- 
ing more  directly  to  the  attainment 
of  happiness.  The  belief  last  men- 
tioned is  based  upon  the  supposition 
that  pleasure  constitutes  the    whole 

of  happiness;  that  when  outwardly 

51 


52  /iDonep  fninger 

engaged  it  can  always  be  assimilated, 
and  that  affluence  easily  commands 
all  of  pleasure's  desirable  forms. 
These  concepts  are  largely  induced 
by  the  subtle  awe  of  wealth  which 
is  felt  by  those  who  have  never 
held  it — a  reverence  which  in  their 
eyes  clothes  the  wealthy  with  mys- 
terious powers,  and  constitutes  them 
beings  of  a  different  natural  order, 
subject  only  to  vague  and  rarely 
effective  restraints. 

So  pervasive  and  controlling  have 
these  sentiments  become  that  from 
among  all  the  passionate  ambitions 
which  give  rise  to  human  activity 
the  hunger  for  money  alone  may  be 
selected  as  our  national  characteristic. 
And  in  no  activity  of  our  life,  how- 
ever far  its  votaries  may  seem  to  be 
led  from  the  highways  of  trade,  is 


/IDonep  Ibuncjer  53 

there  longer  freedom  from  the  insidi- 
ous palm-itch  which  is  death  to  those 
nobler  incentives  which  alone  in  all 
ages  have  led  to  the  greatest  human 
achievements — the  impersonal  motive 
in  labor,  the  thought  single  to  the 
work  in  hand,  the  love  of  craftsman- 
ship, which  finds  its  recompense  in 
the  thing  accomplished,  its  joy  in  the 
contemplation  of  work  well  done. 
This  ubiquitous  desire  for  wealth 
seems  rapidly  to  be  destroying  the 
instinctive  conception  of  craftsman- 
ship, a  concept  which  does  not  exalt 
as  the  end  to  be  attained  the  money- 
worth  of  the  work  in  hand,  but  which 
parts  with  the  result  of  its  labors  in 
exchange  for  the  means  of  leisurely 
livelihood,  that  it  may  indulge  and 
thereby  amplify  the  only  thing  which 
can  be  the  personal  possession  of  any 


54  fl!>one\?  Ibuncjer 

man — his  proficiency  in  the  particular 
talent  that  is  his. 

Not  only  has  the  habit  of  thinking 
exclusively  in  money-values  sapped 
the  living  soul  of  craftsmanship — un- 
til the  latter  is  fallen  to  the  level  of 
perfunctory  labor,  with  its  finger  at 
the  pulse  of  the  market  and  its  eye  to 
the  clock — and  so  lowered  the  whole 
tone  of  our  artisanry;  but  it  has  par- 
alyzed, as  well,  the  very  nerve-cen- 
ters of  our  intellectual  and  moral 
perceptions,  and  has  rendered  us  in- 
sensible to  the  best  that  is  being 
thought  and  done  in  the  world,  and 
has  made  us  incapable  of  feeling 
repugnance  for  any  but  the  grossest 
forms  of  commercial  rascality. 

Thus  a  blight  due  to  the  pre- 
valence in  men's  minds  of  the  mys- 
terious   possibilities   of   wealth    has 


/iDonep  Ibunger  55 


not  only  seared  the  finer  qualities  of 
the  American  character,  as  expressed 
in  all  of  the  departments  of  our  life, 
but  in  their  stead  it  has  abnormally 
developed  a  different  trait,  the  low 
cunning  of  selfishness,  a  propensity 
which  is  at  the  root  of  the  money- 
instinct,  and  to  which  are  repug- 
nant such  material  denials  of  self  as 
are  necessary  to  the  rigid  mainte- 
nance of  integrity.  Where  the  senti- 
ment of  a  community  has  ceased  to 
weigh  things  of  the  spirit  against  the 
material  possessions  of  life,  and  afflu- 
ence is  honored  above  character,  it 
need  cause  no  surprise  that  men 
should  hasten  to  sacrifice  the  latter 
to  the  acquisition  of  wealth. 

Whatever  may  be  the  controlling 
ideas  of  our  nation,  the  thief  will  con- 
tinue to  steal;  but,  if  the  psychic  bent 


56  /iDonev?  ibunger 


of  our  people  were  towards  objects 
other  than  the  accumulation  of  wealth, 
fewer  thieves  would  be  bred,  and 
these  would  be  native  to  classes  dis- 
tinctively productive  of  criminals. 
Then  would  be  impossible  the  satu- 
ration of  our  social  fabric  with  a 
predisposition  towards  larceny  in  its 
polite  forms,  or  the  procuration  of 
high  legal  talent  for  the  fitting  to 
crime  of  clever  disguises,  or  the  tem- 
porizing complacency  of  many  to 
whom  their  very  association  with  the 
wrongdoer  should  be  unthinkable. 

Such  a  state  of  public  mind  would 
already  be  far  advanced  were  there  a 
wide-spread  knowledge  of  the  inhe- 
rent limitations  of  the  possibilities  of 
wealth,  and  of  the  purely  artificial 
character  of  the  aura  with  which  it 
surrounds  a  man,  without  contribut- 


/iDonep  ibunoer  57 


ing  to  him  a  single  attribute  not  nat- 
urally his;  in  fine,  were  it  but  under- 
stood that  a  man  is  not  soluble  in 
his  money,  nor  his  money  in  him. 

When  it  is  generally  seen  that 
wealth  merely  increases  the  leverage 
of  a  man's  propensities,  and  that  no 
further  than  it  enables  him  to  culti- 
vate them  for  good  or  for  evil  can  it 
become  part  of  his  personality,  or  at 
all  enter  into  personal  relations  with 
him,  men  will  seek  possessions  that 
are  more  intimately  profitable, — and 
the  intellectual  life  of  our  nation  will 
have  begun. 

Nowhere  more  exactingly  than  in 
the  case  of  a  man  and  his  enjoyment 
of  wealth  does  the  law  of  diminishing 
returns  apply.  A  little  can  confer  im- 
measurably more  benefit  than  a  great 
deal ;  and  it  might  be  said  that  the 


5 8  /iDonev?  Tbunocr 


rate  at  which  the  capacity  for  the  en- 
joyment of  wealth  diminishes  with 
increase  of  its  extent  may  almost  be 
reduced  to  a  mathematical  formula. 
The  capacity  of  a  man  for  the  absorp- 
tion of  purchasable  things  is  less  than 
is  popularly  supposed  ;  and  an  exam- 
ination of  the  cost  of  the  necessaries 
and  simple  luxuries  of  life  will  illus- 
trate the  fact  that  its  limit  lies  well 
within  the  purse  of  the  average 
member  of  our  industrious  classes. 

To  the  destitute,  money  means  life  ; 
to  those  who  have  already  a  little, 
comfort ;  to  the  well-off,  luxury  ; 
while  to  the  wealthy  it  brings  only 
the  remoter  forms  of  enjoyment, 
which,  as  they  rise  in  costliness, 
grow  correspondingly  impersonal, 
and  are  therefore  more  faint  in 
their   power   to    arouse    pleasurable 


fl&ones  Ibunoer  59 


sensations.    The  ennui  of  the  rich- 
fatigue  grown  of  the  pleasures  and 
pains  of  possession — is   indeed   not 
without  underlying  cause  which  is 
based  upon  natural  law. 


CHAPTER  VII 

A  S  the  government  of  a  state 
**  but  administers  the  composite 
thought  of  its  people,  which  has  been 
organized  for  purposes  of  guidance 
and  control,  it  is  but  natural  that  the 
prevailing  sins  of  that  people  should 
find  their  way  into  the  administration 
of  its  affairs.  The  moral  condition  of  a 
community  may  therefore  be  gener- 
ally determined  by  the  acts  of  the 
men  whom  it  permits  to  govern  it : 
which  is  true  whether  they  be  chosen 
officials,  or  self-asserted  leaders  who 
are  unresistingly  followed.  In  either 
case,  if  the  fiduciary  tone  of  a  com- 
munity be  low,  the  leverage  of  gov- 

60 


/IDoneE  Ibunger  61 

ernment  will  be  exerted  by  those  in 
power  against  the  people  themselves, 
upon  whom  will  be  flagrantly  per- 
petrated such  rascalities  as  they  com- 
placently permit  of  one  and  other. 

With  rare  and  sporadic  exceptions, 
in  respect  of  the  behavior  of  certain 
individuals  in  office — who  are  con- 
spicuous because  of  their  sincerity  in 
behalf  of  the  public's  welfare, — such 
is  the  position  in  which  we  now  find 
ourselves.  And  it  may  justly  be  said 
that  among  us  commercial  and  po- 
litical immorality  are  so  closely  inter- 
woven, and  so  widely  prevalent,  as  not 
only  to  have  tainted  the  whole  of  our 
social  fabric  with  the  belief  that  favors 
of  government  are  to  be  purchased 
with  money,  or  influence,  but  to  have 
brought  all  forms  of  constituted  au- 
thority into  general  contempt. 


62  ZlDonev?  Ibunger 

When  the  possessions  of  a  nation,  of 
one  of  its  states,  or  of  a  municipality, 
may  become  the  personal  capital  of 
those  charged  to  administer  them, 
and  may  be  used  as  such  for  the 
individual  benefit  of  their  adminis- 
trators ;  when  powers,  granted  by  a 
people  to  its  legislative  representa- 
tives, may  be  misapplied  at  the  peo- 
ple's cost  to  yield  unwarrantable 
privilege  to  private  interests ;  when 
executive  officers  may  suspend  for 
money  the  application  of  laws,  or 
harshly  enforce  them  for  purposes 
of  extortion;  —  when  all  of  these 
things  may  be  done  in  the  full  sight 
of  a  people  without  instantly  arous- 
ing it  to  drastic  measures  of  pun- 
ishment, of  correction,  of  restraint, 
little  indeed  is  to  be  said  of  the  citi- 
zen who,  shrugging  his  shoulders  at 


Aliened  Ibunoer  63 

official  corruption,  considers  himself 
to  be  acting  with  moderation  if  he 
only  pick  the  pockets  of  his  neighbor. 

However  the  fact  be  disguised  be- 
neath an  aspect  of  wise  provision  and 
honorable  motive,  the  federal  govern- 
ment itself,  in  its  adherence  to  its 
cherished  industrial  policy,  can  no 
longer  escape  the  charge  of  pandering 
to  the  commercial  debauchery  of  the 
times. 

Where  privileges  are  easily  to  be 
obtained  by  legislation,  it  is  but  nat- 
ural that  the  concrete  interests  of 
those  seeking  favors  should  thrust 
themselves  upon  legislative  attention 
to  the  exclusion  of  more  abstract  mat- 
ters relating  to  the  public  need.  And 
it  is  no  less  to  be  expected  that  to 
such  a  legislature  innumerable  peti- 
tions should  flow. 


64  /iDonep  ibunger 


Where  the  office-holding  class  is 
actuated  by  motives  other  than  the 
public  good,  or  a  conscientious  ap- 
plication of  political  principles,  it  is  to 
be  expected  that  it  should  regard  the 
retention  of  office  as  paramount  to  a 
faithful  performance  of  its  duties  to 
the  state.  Such  a  class,  therefore, 
in  order  that  it  may  be  left  in  the  en- 
joyment of  the  usufruct  of  office,  will 
(so  long  as  the  prerogatives  or  profits 
of  office  be  not  attacked)  strive  to  pro- 
pitiate the  electorate  or  those  exer- 
cising appointive  power,  by  a  ready 
compliance  with  their  wishes.  Thus 
it  is  that  officialdom  is  ever  at  the 
bidding  of  shrewd  political  manip- 
ulators, or  ot  the  public's  whimsies  ; 
while  out  of  this  dual  subserviency 
there  arises  the  huge  annual  volume  of 
our  unwise,  unnecessary,  and  venal 


/H>oneE  Ibunger  65 


legislation.  And,  by  the  same 
agencies,  there  is  continually  being 
fostered  the  habit  of  a  cynically  lax 
or  an  unjustly  discriminative  adminis- 
tration of  such  of  the  laws  as  are  good. 
Perplexed  by  the  stupendous  pro- 
ductiveness of  his  legislative  mills, 
and  the  little  general  betterment  that 
seems  to  come  of  it ;  grown  suspicious 
of  legislative  and  executive  motive, 
through  his  daily  observation  of  cor- 
rupt commercio-political  practices ; 
and  being  led  to  expect  of  the  law  in- 
stability, because  of  the  kaleidoscopic 
enactment  and  repeal,  in  endless  vari- 
ety, of  illy-conceived  or  grossly  tenta- 
tive legislation,  the  average  citizen  is 
hardly  to  be  blamed  if  he  grows  to 
hold  in  contempt  all  of  the  literature 
which  appears  between  the  covers 
of  his  statute  books. 


66  /lDonep  "tounger 


Thus  the  American,  distrustful  as 
he  is  of  the  efficacy  of  the  law  of  his 
community,  whether  it  exists  for  his 
protection  or  restraint,  becomes  an 
extreme  individualist,  and  goes  about 
his  affairs  much  as  if  he  were  not  at 
all  under  the  aegis  of  authority.  He 
is  ever  ready,  on  the  one  hand,  to  de- 
fend himself;  on  the  other  he  is  sur- 
prised when  held  to  account  for  his 
deeds. 

The  greatest  use  of  law  is,  by  means 
of  its  profound  worth  so  deeply  to 
possess  the  regard  of  a  people  as  to 
furnish  an  unconsciously  operative 
motive  for  their  actions.  This  re- 
quires of  the  law  three  things:  that 
its  measures  shall  be  just,  that  they 
shall  be  permanent,  and  that  they 
shall  be  administered  with  inexorable 
impartiality.      Not    until    we    shall 


/IDone\?  Ifouufler  67 

have  attained  that  state  of  civic  life 
in  which  a  condition  closely  ap- 
proaching the  foregoing  shall  obtain, 
will  the  law  truly  become  preventa- 
tive of  crime,  and  cease  to  be  a  mere 
threat,  its  consequences  easily  to  be 
avoided  or  compounded,  if  one  but 
have  wealth  or  influence. 

It  cannot  be  said  that  amongst  us, 
as  yet,  there  is  that  inbred  spirit  of 
communal  honesty  which, in  moments 
of  allurement,  may  be  relied  upon  to 
support  the  weak.  On  the  contrary, 
our  probity,  being  individual  rather 
than  collective,  assumes  an  infinite 
variety  of  aspects,  in  each  of  which 
the  quality  and  degree  of  continence 
native  to  the  particular  individual  in- 
volved will  determine  his  moral  be- 
havior in  the  face  of  temptation. 
Indeed,  so  strong  is   this  tendency 


68  /IDonev?  tmnger 


towards  individualism,  in  the  interpre- 
tation of  ethical  truths  affecting  par- 
ticularly commercial  transactions,  that 
one  is  likely  to  find  in  infinite  variety 
opinions  of  the  right  or  wrong  of  any 
questionable  matter. 

Given  a  community  bewildered  by 
the  absence  of  a  clearly  defined  code 
of  commercial  morals  applicable  to 
all  of  the  business  transactions  of  life, 
sow  in  it  the  seed  of  an  inordinate 
passion  for  wealth,  privilege  the  few, 
whose  purses  bring  to  bear  influence, 
at  the  cost  of  the  many,  govern  it 
with  a  faltering  grasp  upon  the 
weapons  of  justice, — and  inevitably 
there  must  result  corruption  in  every 
activity  which  can  be  used  or  dis- 
torted for  the  purpose  of  gain. 

But  the  law  cannot  move  in  ad- 
vance of  the  sense  of  the  community, 


ZlDone^  fmnger  69 


for  where  there  is  general  lack  of  re- 
spect for  its  provisions  it  is  futile  to 
attempt  their  rigid  enforcement.  Ad- 
vanced legislation,  as  well  as  that 
which  is  hasty  or  ill-conceived,  in- 
evitably must  reflect  discredit  upon 
the  whole  body  of  the  law:  for  im- 
potent enactments,  or  such  as  remain 
unenforced,  become  statutes  dis- 
dained, and  from  disregard  of  particu- 
lar ordinances  to  contempt  for  the  law 
as  a  whole  is  but  a  short  step. 

Therefore,  until  public  sentiment 
shall  have  grown  to  consider  hon- 
esty an  essential  quality  of  success, 
the  art  of  formulating  laws  capable 
of  insuring  the  inviolability  of  the 
rights  of  property  cannot  overtake 
the  larger,  the  more  intricate,  forms 
of  theft.  Meanwhile,  as  the  honor 
of  framing  and  supporting  just  laws 


7o  ZlDonq?  Ibunoer 


is  held  to  be  less  a  reward  than 
the  wages  to  be  got  for  devising 
means  to  nullify  or  evade  them,  our 
best  ,  legal  minds,  long  since  the 
Fagins  of  modern  commercialdom, 
will  continue  to  be  for  sale  to  those 
who  wish  to  enjoy  the  fruits  of  crime, 
without  incurring  its  penalties. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

O  AVING  briefly  indicated  the  nature 
and  the  causes  of  prevalent  com- 
mercial vice,  it  will  be  well  next  to 
ascertain  the  general  direction  of  its 
trend,  with  a  view  to  discover  whither 
it  leads,  and  what  may  be  done  to- 
wards its  arrest,  or  towards  the  guid- 
ance of  the  forces  behind  it,  to  the  end 
that  our  commercial  life  may  be  the 
more  quickly  set  upon  a  clean  and 
healthful  basis. 

That  progress  towards  betterment 
in  some  directions  is  being  made  no 
thoughtful  person  will  deny.  The 
fact  that  corruption  of  the  present 

day,   when  compared  with   that  of 

71 


72  /H>one£  Ibunger 


even  recent  history,  has  assumed 
forms  more  intricate  and  disguises 
more  difficult  of  detection  and  is 
continuously  readjusting  its  methods 
in  an  attempt  to  push  its  position  of 
security  further  along  in  advance  of 
public  condemnation  and  the  law, 
would  suggest  that  its  cruder  and 
more  obvious  aspects  no  longer  serve 
its  purposes— which  testifies  to  a 
growth  of  public  discernment  and 
disapprobation— and  that,  however 
badly  managed  it  may  be,  the  cum- 
brous vehicle  of  the  law  is  never- 
theless making  some  headway  in 
pursuit. 

But,  while  the  slight  signs  of 
gain  are  encouraging,  principally  be- 
cause they  disclose  a  healthful  di- 
rection of  prospective  development, 
nevertheless  they  cannot  be  said  to 


/lOones  tninger  73 


spring  from  a  moral  quickening  of 
the  people,  for  they  are  rather  due  to 
the  gradual  perception  by  one,  as  it 
were,  whose  property  is  in  jeopardy, 
of  means  wherewith  to  defend  it, 
than  to  a  conscientious  abhorrence 
on  the  part  of  any  class  in  the  com- 
munity of  corruption,  as  such. 

Therefore  to  prudential  reasons 
alone,  doubtless,  will  have  to  be  at- 
tributed so  much  of  the  progress  in 
commercial  and  political  morality  as 
is  likely  to  be  made  in  the  imme- 
diate future.  While  the  aim  of  the 
corrective  principle  at  work  will  in 
the  main  be  directed  to  require  of 
corporate  personalities,  which  have 
grown  to  wield  such  gigantic  power, 
habits  of  candor  and  of  fair  dealing, 
this  movement  can  in  no  sense  be 
said  to  indicate  a  moral  awakening. 


74  /iDoncv?  Ibunocr 


Of  an  actual  revolt  by  the  people 
at  large,  or  of  any  particular  class  of 
them,  against  corruption,  whether 
practised  by  corporations  or  indi- 
viduals, because  of  its  essential  im- 
morality, there  seems  to  be  not  the 
slightest  indication.  On  the  contrary, 
with  every  recent  accession  to  the 
superabundance  of  our  material  pos- 
sessions there  has  been  sounded  a 
correspondingly  deeper  note  in  our 
expressions  of  cynical  contempt  for 
the  trait  of  volitional  probity.  It  is  in- 
deed true  that  a  quaint  pride,  which  re- 
fuses what  has  not  fairly  been  earned, 
may  still  be  found  in  certain  localities 
in  the  national  commonwealth  ;  but 
these,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  lie  well 
apart  from  the  modern  highways  of 
commerce. 

The  conditions  at  present  existing 


flDonep  ftunger  75 

may  thus  be  summarized :  There 
is  (1)  a  perceptible  betterment  of 
corporate  and  political  corruption  (2) 
due  to  a  growing  discernment  on  the 
part  of  the  people  of  more  effectual 
means  for  resisting  rascality  and  ex- 
tortion, but  (3)  in  the  fiber  of  their 
commercial  morality  the  people  them- 
selves show  signs  of  deterioration, 
which  (4)  manifest  no  indications  of 
abatement. 


CHAPTER  IX 

T  ET  us,  however,  examine  the 
^  deeper  currents  which  flow  be- 
neath the  conscious  life  of  the  nation, 
and,  so  far  as  from  our  present  stand- 
point we  are  able,  ascertain  what 
changes  are  likely  to  occur  in  the 
controlling  impulses  of  its  people. 

The  American  is,  of  necessity,  es- 
sentially an  active  person.  Starting 
in  a  land  in  which  no  berth  lay  pre- 
pared for  his  occupancy  he  has  had 
to  create  his  own  opportunities,  and, 
having  found  them,  he  has  had  to 
hold  them  against  the  aggressions  of 
others,  seeking  like  himself  to  make 

their  way.     A  clear  head  has  been 

76 


ZlDoncv?  Ibunoer  77 

his  ;  but  the  duty  required  of  it  has 
run  in  practical,  rather  than  contem- 
plative, channels ;  he  has  been  the 
hewer  rather  than  the  thinker,  the 
frontiersman  rather  than  the  scholar. 
Charged  with  securing  results  amidst 
constantly  shifting  conditions  of 
growth,  he  has  been  concerned 
with  ends  rather  than  means  ;  and, 
because  of  the  instability  of  his 
surroundings,  he  has  had  no  oppor- 
tunity unconsciously  to  acquire  a 
formal  code  of  life  after  the  manner 
of  successive  generations  in  older 
communities. 

Concentrated  upon  the  work  of 
putting  his  material  house  in  order, 
he  has  had  neither  time  nor  inclina- 
tion for  such  intellectual  cultivation 
as  could  not  be  turned  to  what  he 
conceived  to  be   practical  account ; 


78  /iDonev?  Ibunoer 

and,  as  a  consequence,  the  might  of 
the  nation,  almost  to  a  man,  having 
furiously  fallen  upon  the  development 
of  the  physical  resources  of  its  ter- 
ritory, has,  almost  as  completely,  neg- 
lected the  intellectual  expansion  of 
its  people. 

The  American  has  had  schools 
enough,  but  their  every  window  has 
overlooked  a  shop ;  universities  in 
plenty,  but  their  traditions  have  bred 
a  peremptory  impulse  to  join  the 
ranks  striving  for  material  gain  ;  li- 
braries without  count,  but  the  vol- 
umes most  eagerly  snatched  from  their 
shelves  have  taught  only  of  the  phys- 
ical facts  of  nature,  and  how  to  set 
them  at  work.  He  has  builded  a 
hive,  which  is  throbbing  with  in- 
dustry, whose  workers  are  concerned 
with  securing,  in  vast  and  unconsum- 


/IDonep  tmnaer  79 

able  hoards,  what?  —  merely  the 
means  of  subsistence.  A  cynical 
observer  truly  might  add  :  "As  well 
do  the  bees ! — so,  what  shall  we 
answer  when  asked  to  account  for 
the  use  of  the  intellectual  qualities 
which  differentiate  the  man  from  the 
insect  ?  " 

The  American  well  conceived  the 
need  for  securing  himself  in  the  phys- 
ical requisites  and  luxuries  of  life;  but, 
overrunning  his  goal,  he  has  grown 
to  regard  material  well-being  as  in 
itself  the  sufficient  end  of  a  life's  ef- 
fort, seemingly  unconscious  of  the  fact 
that  once  having  arrived  at  the  point 
of  security  as  to  his  livelihood,  prob- 
lems of  a  different  sort  are  entitled 
to  his  attention;  and  that  pursuits  of 
an  intellectual  nature  offer  him  other- 
wise unattainable   heights  of  enjoy- 


So  flDoneg  ibunoer 

ment,  and  the  world's  greater  respect. 
As  a  result  of  his  conception  of  worthy 
ends  the  American  has  surrounded 
himself  with  a  stifling  atmosphere  of 
utilitarianism,  which,  denying  it  other 
expression,  has  cramped  the  genius  of 
his  people,  willy-nilly,  into  rigid  forms 
of  practical  utility.  He  may  boast  a 
superb  array  of  epochal  inventions, 
but  to  force  this  particular  bloom  he 
has  pinched  the  buds  of  art,  science, 
literature,  and  philosophy. 

Thus  to  him  may  be  given  the 
credit  of  having  brought  to  its  highest 
stage  of  development  the  habit  of 
turning  physical  nature  to  practical 
account;  but,  having  found  the  sym- 
bol of  success  in  this  respect  to  be 
the  money-sign,  the  American  uncon- 
sciously has  converted  his  regard  for 
the  living  entity,  work,  into  a  passion 


jfl&onc\?  tmnaer  81 

to  possess  himself  of  its  abstract  rep- 
resentative, money.  He  has  grown 
to  believe  it  to  be  less  desirable  to 
have  performed  an  extraordinary  task 
than  to  be  possessed  of  its  fruits. 
But,  with  the  signs  of  deprivation 
scarce  out  of  his  face,  and  those  of 
hard  labor  still  on  his  hands,  little 
less  than  an  exaltation  of  riches  is  to 
be  expected  of  a  man  who  suddenly 
finds  himself  to  be  opulent.  And  in 
a  nation  composed  of  such  men,  en- 
joying the  first  flush  of  intoxicating 
prosperity,  it  is  but  natural  that  the 
thoughts,  the  aspirations,  and  the 
temptations  of  its  people  should  cen- 
ter about  the  desideratum,  wealth. 

In  the  foregoing  explanation  is  to 
be  found  the  genesis  of  the  prevailing 
apotheosis  of  riches  in  the  United 
States.     In  the  recent  phenomenal 


82  flDonet?  Ifoimoer 


acceleration  of  prosperity  lies  the 
cause  of  the  precipitate  augmentation 
of  this  controlling  popular  emotion, 
under  the  influence  of  which,  in  a  lit- 
tle more  than  a  decade,  the  sign  and 
seven  figures  have  ceased  to  satisfy 
individual  appetites,  which,  in  rapid 
succession,  have  gorged  fortunes  of 
eight,  and  of  nine  figures, — and  now 
are  as  hungrily  passing  on  to  what- 
ever is  to  be  had  of  the  money-sign 
set  before  ten. 

Such  an  onrush  of  an  entire  com- 
munity, seemingly  bent  upon  the  at- 
tainment of  an  elusive  material  goal, 
would  indeed  be  ominous  if  it  were 
an  expression  of  the  settled  purpose 
of  a  matured  national  character.  It 
is,  however,  but  the  impulsive  caprice 
of  a  youthful  and  hard-working  but 
mercurial  people,  addicted  to  the  im- 


/iDonep  fninger  83 


petuous  pursuit  of  ephemeral  sensa- 
tions, and  exhilarated  by  unexpected 
success  in  what  happens  to  be  the 
fashionable  sport  of  acquisition. 

The  question  now  arises,  What  is 
likely  to  be  the  duration  of  popular 
enthusiasm  over  this— which  may 
properly  be  termed  the  only— national 
pastime  ?  A  sufficient  answer  is  to  be 
found  in  the  law  that  pleasure  lies  in 
the  novelty  of  sensation,  and  weari- 
ness in  its  repetition— that  there  is 
always  reaction  at  the  point  of  satiety. 
So  rapidly  as  experience  of  the  mo- 
notonous passivity  of  the  state  of  mere 
ownership  shall  permeate  the  more 
advanced  classes  of  society,  and  to  its 
other  classes  shall  grow  stale  news  of 
the  habits  and  exploits  and  possessions 
of  those  who  yield  no  topic  of  interest 
but  wealth,  so  soon  will  the  nation 


84  flBones  Ibumjer 

discover  to  itself  the  colossal  store  of 
inchoate  intellectuality  which  uncon- 
sciously it  is  accumulating, — and  then 
will  begin  its  moral  regeneration. 

Already  may  the  process  be  seen  at 
work,  in  the  silent  desertions  from 
our  huge  industrial  army.  Heedless 
of  the  monetary  rewards  they  for- 
sake, here  and  there  are  dropping  out 
of  its  ranks  self-centered,  courageous 
spirits,  who  are  content  to  risk  the 
contemptuous  wonder  of  their  fellows 
for  the  sake  of  their  intellectual  eman- 
cipation, for  the  joy  of  the  intimate 
fellowship  of  their  own  ideals — a  joy 
which  is  only  to  be  had  through  the 
complete  sacrifice  of  material  interest 
to  the  cultivation  by  each  of  his  par- 
ticular talent.  Furthermore,  occa- 
sional money-surfeited  men  are  to  be 
seen  wistfully  striving  to  readjust  their 


/l>one£  Ifounoer  85 


intellectual  visions  to  a  spiritual  com- 
prehension of  the  world's  legacies  of 
genius ;  or  are  to  be  found  seeking 
paths  to  heights  of  honor  which  are 
not  to  be  traversed  save  beneath  the 
burdens  of  others,  or  of  the  nation 
itself. 

These  are  the  harbingers  of  a  move- 
ment of  revolt,  as  yet  hardly  to  be 
discerned ;  but  which,  be  it  soon  or 
late,  must  eventually  alter  the  tastes 
and  reshape  the  aspirations  of  the 
American  people.  Then  there  shall 
be  reverenced  other  and  higher  ideals 
than  those  of  the  market-place  ;  ideals 
in  the  prosecution  of  which  neither 
chicanery  nor  theft,  however  clever 
their  disguise,  can  assure  preferment 
or  honor.  Meanwhile,  every  effort 
put  forth  on  behalf  of  art,  of  science,  of 
literature,  which  shall  attract  to  these 


86  fl>one\?  Ibunflcr 

pursuits  the  youth  of  the  nation,  will 
be  as  so  much  leaven  in  the  mass  of 
our  national  ignorance  and  greed  :  for, 
as  these  new  activities  grow  in  the 
estimation  of  the  people  at  large,  so 
will  diminish  the  worship  of  wealth, 
and  the  tolerance  of  the  forms  of 
wrong  bred  of  its  deification.  The 
practice  of  accumulation  beyond  the 
needs  of  a  living  liberally  provided 
for  will  gradually  cease  to  be  an 
obligation  inexorably  laid  upon  the 
shoulders  of  every  man  who  wishes 
to  be  honored  of  his  fellows,  but  will 
become  an  occupation,  like  other 
activities,  to  be  pursued  by  those 
whose  predominant  genius  lies  in  its 
direction. 

It  is,  of  course,  within  the  possi- 
bilities that  an  unforeseen  moral 
awakening,  one  perhaps  of  emotional 


/n>one\?  Ibunger  87 

character,  shall  precede  the  orderly 
processes  of  intellectual  development 
thus  outlined ;  but  there  seems  now  to 
be  no  underlying  condition  in  the 
popular  temper  out  of  which  such  an 
event  may  arise. 


CHAPTER  X 

/CONCURRENTLY  with  the  gradual 
^  readjustment  of  ideals,  which, 
seemingly,  must  be  relied  upon  to 
prove  the  ultimate  corrective  of  the 
prevailing  epidemic  of  commercial 
immorality,  other  and  more  direct 
remedial  measures  must  be  sought 
out  and  applied.  The  more  correctly 
these  are  forecast  the  sooner  will 
their  effects  be  realized  ;  which  makes 
it  plainly  worth  while  to  touch  upon 
those  things  to  be  done  which  lie  next 
at  hand. 

With  respect  to  the  question  of 
immigration  there  is  at  present  no 
clearly  defined  principle  upon  which 

88 


/iOoncE  Ibunger  89 


our  policy  rests.  Rapidly  passing 
away  is  the  old  conception  of  America 
as  a  land  of  refuge  for  the  oppressed 
of  all  nations ;  a  conception  which 
gave  rise  to  the  benevolent  practise 
of  welcoming  the  stranger,  whether 
he  be  upright  or  criminal,  healthy  or 
diseased,  fit  or  otherwise  to  partici- 
pate in  the  work  of  the  nation's  up- 
building. In  its  stead  there  is  growing 
the  selfish,  but  more  eminently  prac- 
tical, notion  that  we  should  accept 
new-comers  only  upon  the  proofs  of 
their  prospective  worth  as  elements 
of  our  citizenry. 

In  harmony  with  this  new  con- 
ception we  have  already  established 
standards  of  physical  fitness,  and,  to 
a  limited  extent,  of  thrift,  to  which 
if  they  would  be  received  immigrants 
must  conform.     But  in  response  to 


9o  /iDoncs  ifounger 

what  should  have  appeared  the  ob- 
vious necessity  of  a  morally  whole- 
some selection,  we  have  gone  no 
further  than  to  turn  from  our  shores 
the  individual  criminal ;  and  have 
taken  no  step  in  the  direction  of  as- 
certaining, and  of  insisting  upon,  the 
ethical  qualifications  of  individuals, 
classes,  or  peoples  seeking  admission 
to  our  country.  Therefore  it  may 
be  said  that  not  having  made  up  our 
minds  wholly  to  surrender  the  old 
and  embrace  the  new  policy,  we  are 
still  astride  both. 

Now,  if,  as  would  seem  to  be  the 
case,  among  the  multitude  which 
makes  up  the  vast  influx  of  immigra- 
tion there  are  those  who,  in  their 
hunger  for  affluence  upon  any  terms, 
bring  with  them  an  infectious  com- 
mercial depravity,  or  in  other  ways 


flfooney  Tbunoer  91 


lack  traditions  of  fair  dealing,  or  of  gen- 
eral morality  as  we  interpret  the  word, 
it  would  seem  that  our  wretched  pre- 
vailing conditions  of  commercial  and 
political  morality  must  emphasize  the 
necessity  of  an  abrupt  abandonment 
of  what  remains  of  the  theory  that 
required  of  us  unflinching  hospital- 
ity, and  the  substitution  for  it  of  a 
working  hypothesis  which  shall  en- 
able us  to  select  from  among  the 
older  peoples  none  but  those  whom 
we  safely  may  undertake  to  absorb. 

When  considered  purely  from  a 
utilitarian  standpoint  it  would  seem 
to  be  wiser  to  raise  the  moral  and 
intellectual  tone  of  our  immigrants, 
even  though  in  so  doing  we  should 
lessen  for  the  time  the  available  supply 
of  those  whom  we  need  for  the  grosser 
forms  of  work.    For,  by  disassociating 


92  /IDoncE  UDunflcr 


the  ideas  of  ignorance  and  bestiality 
as  necessary  concomitants  of  the  hum- 
bler kinds  of  toil,  we  should  be  going 
so  far  towards  raising  the  dignity  of 
the  latter  as  to  make  them  more  at- 
tractive occupations  to  higher,  and 
therefore  more  efficient,  industrial 
types. 

With  the  deliberate  development  of 
such  a  policy  class  selfishness,  racial 
pride  or  antipathy,  and  many  prac- 
tical obstacles  will  doubtless  interfere  : 
nevertheless,  the  problems  involved 
being  of  the  kind  which  yield,  how- 
ever slowly,  when  temperately  and 
circumstantially  attacked,  their  sol- 
ution lies  easily  within  the  range  of 
our  knowledge  and  abilities. 


CHAPTER  XI 

TX)  educate  the  youth  of  an  indus- 
trial  community  in  all  branches 
of  commercial  lore,  save  only  that  of 
the  honorable  conduct  of  business  in 
the  face  of  opportunity  to  gain  by 
wrong-doing,  seems,  indeed,  a  curious 
anomaly.  Nevertheless,  such  is  our 
practise.  Our  children  are  thoroughly 
drilled  in  the  ways  of  doing  all  manner 
of  useful  things  ;  but  of  the  inculca- 
tion of  a  code  of  restraint,  which  shall 
confine  the  exercise  of  unusually  de- 
veloped talents  to  the  prosecution  of 
legitimate  aims,  and  which  shall  make 
all  forms  of  commercial  malpractice, 
however    fair-seeming    or    intricate, 

93 


94  /Idoncv  Tbunoer 


intelligible  and  odious  to  the  ordinary 
man,  there  is  no  trace  in  our  educa- 
tional system. 

At  great  pains  we  are  physically 
and  intellectually  trained  to  labor ; 
but  we  grow  to  adult  life  with  no 
clear  perception  of  the  relative  worths 
of  ends  which  may  be  attained, 
nor  of  the  ways  by  which  we  may 
legitimately  proceed  to  encompass 
them.  Nor  with  respect  to  the  seri- 
ous business  of  life  is  there  bred  into 
us  that  spirit  of  fair  play,  called  honor, 
which  holds  in  contempt  every  act 
by  which  unfair  advantage  can  be 
gained.  There  does  not  exist  in 
our  educational  institutions  such  a 
thing  as  a  course  in  formal  morality, 
adjusted  with  minute  precision  to  the 
practical  contingencies  of  life.  In  its 
stead  the  development  and  education 


/lDone£  Ibunoer  95 

of  a  sense  of  right  is  left  by  the  school 
to  the  home,  or  to  the  church, — to  be 
dealt  with  by  the  first,  when  at  all, 
but  casually,  and  by  the  second  in  an 
archaic  spirit  of  vague  generality. 

There  needs  to  be  evolved  for  use 
in  our  schools  a  standardization  of 
commercial  immorality,  which  shall 
so  clearly  disclose  the  various  shades 
of  wrong-doing,  so  accurately  name 
them,  and  so  unerringly  point  them 
out,  as  at  once  to  dissipate  the  atmos- 
phere of  mystery  which  too  often  is 
made  to  surround  them,  and  upon 
the  maintenance  of  which  their  suc- 
cess so  largely  depends.  Out  of  such 
would  naturally  grow  a  science  of 
commercial  self-defence;  its  code  serv- 
ing to  diminish  rascality  by  rendering 
its  successful  practise  more  difficult, 
and  to  stimulate  and  give  point  to 


96  flDonep  Ibungcr 


existing  vague  notions  of  honor,  un- 
til these  shall  have  become  firmly- 
held  positive  scruples,  detective  of 
fair-seeming  phases  of  wrong,  and 
involuntarily  hostile  to  the  most 
delicate  suggestions  of  participancy 
therein. 

In  our  schools,  which  are  filled  with 
the  children  of  all  nationalities,  where 
race  tendencies  in  infinite  variety  are 
struggling  with  the  problems  of  a 
new  environment  and  where  it  is 
sought  to  fit  each  unit  of  the  hetero- 
geneous mass  into  a  uniform  scheme 
of  citizenship,  it  is  undeniably  of  pro- 
found importance  that  such  a  unify- 
ing code  of  practical  morality  should 
be  included  in  the  curriculum,  and 
that  its  tenets  should  be  indelibly 
stamped  upon  the  characters  of  our 
youth  from  childhood. 


flDonep  Ibunger  97 

In  such  a  community  as  ours  there 
need  be  no  fear  for  the  waning  of  in- 
dustrial motive;  but,  on  the  contrary, 
there  is  imminent  danger  that  there 
shall  be  over-developed  the  impulse 
to  labor  only  in  industrial  paths. 
Therefore,  the  necessities  of  healthy 
growth  require  a  vigorous  stimulation 
of  the  ideal  faculties.  Morality  and 
intellectual  progress  alike  demand 
that  in  individual  as  well  as  general 
esteem  these  shall  be  valued  above 
wealth.  To  this  end  there  should  be 
sought  in  each  youth  the  means  to 
his  intellectual  arousal;  and  his  par- 
ticular genius  should  be  nourished, 
and  given  its  wings.  For  thus  only 
— by  grafting  upon  industrial  propen- 
sities intellectual  aspirations  —  may 
the  foundations  of  great  nationality 
be  laid. 


CHAPTER  XII 

/CONSIDERATION  of  the  influences 
which  stimulate,  modify,  or  con- 
trol the  activities  of  our  people  reveals 
the  fact  that  present-day  religion  is  im- 
potent to  enforce  among  men  morality 
in  their  business  relations.  Thus 
one  is  tempted  to  inquire  why  this 
traditional  power  for  righteousness, 
the  possession  of  which  is  so  loudly 
proclaimed  by  a  self-styled  Christian 
people,  finds  its  grasp  upon  the  ac- 
tions of  the  community,  and  upon 
those  of  the  able  and  respected  men 
thereof,  so  slight  as  habitually  to  be 
thrust  aside  as  if  inapplicable  to  the 

practical  affairs  of  life. 

98 


fl&onep  ftunger  99 

That  a  universally  accepted  stand- 
ard of  morality,  applicable  to  all  of  the 
concerns  of  modern  existence,  is  ab- 
solutely essential  to  communal  living, 
seems  to  be  an  undeniable  proposi-. 
tion;  and  equally  true  is  it  that  such  a 
code,  to  be  practically  effective,  must 
primarily  be  lodged,  not  in  the  writ- 
ten law,  but  so  deeply  in  the  spiritual, 
that  is  to  say,  in  the  subconsciously 
self-held  law  of.  the  individual  citizen, 
that  he  shall  regard  its  government 
of  his  daily  transactions  as  a  matter 
of  course. 

If  this  test  be  applied  to  the  estab- 
lished forms  of  religion,  it  at  once 
becomes  obvious  that  a  breach  has 
developed  between  church  and  peo- 
ple, and  that  it  is  of  such  a  nature 
that  in  the  ordinary  conduct  of  their 
affairs  the  people  not  only  have  ceased 


ioo  ZlDonep  Ibunger 

to  submit  to  the  church  the  regulation 
of  their  personal  estimates  of  right  and 
wrong,  but  in  their  secular  relations 
have  grown  to  shun  acknowledgment 
of  the  possession  of  church-bred  mor- 
ality. Therefore  it  may  be  said  with 
accuracy  that  our  religion,  no  longer 
serving  us  in  the  moral  exigencies  of 
life,  has  ceased  to  be  adequate  to  the 
requirements  of  the  times. 

An  explanation  of  the  growing,  and 
now  clearly  discernible,  estrangement 
of  church  and  people  is  to  be  found 
in  the  dual  nature  of  our  religion,  in 
the  forced  co-ordination  of  the  ideas 
of  supernaturalism  and  morality, — in 
the  association  of  concepts  which,  by 
the  very  constitution  of  progressive 
thought,  are  destined  to  dissimilar 
modification,  the  one  by  devolution, 
the  other  by  evolution. 


/i&onep  tmnger  101 

It  is  no  longer  possible  to  offer  the 
intellectual  world  the  supernatural 
as  a  basis  for  morality:  a  fact  so  poig- 
nant that  the  very  association  of  the 
two  inevitably  brings  formal  morality 
under  the  shadow  of  modern  con- 
tempt for  all  survivals  of  mediaeval 
thought;  and,  by  so  much,  lessens 
the  virility  of  its  hold  upon  the  very 
classes  whose  activities  furnish  proto- 
types for  popular  imitation.  There- 
fore, in  order  that  the  moral  code  may 
be  revitalized,  one  of  two  things  must 
transpire:  either  formal  religion  must 
arouse  itself  to  participation  in  the 
prosecution  of  advanced  thought,  and, 
without  subterfuge,  compromise,  or 
hesitation,  promptly  embrace  every 
change  demanded  thereby,  and  thus 
regain  the  respect  and  confidence 
of  the  intellectual  classes,  or  formal 


io2  /lDone£  fmnger 


morality  must  be  reclaimed  from  its 
keeping,  and  established  as  a  science 
independent  of  theology, — a  science 
the  teachings  of  which  all  may 
subscribe  without  incurring  the  ap- 
pearance of  being  possessed  of  super- 
naturalistic  tendencies.  A  cursory 
review  of  the  history  of  the  struggle 
of  organized  theology  to  suppress 
the  emanations  of  advanced  think- 
ing, still  unabated,  will  leave  no  one 
in  doubt  as  to  which  course  in  the 
future  is  likely  to  be  taken. 

Upon  the  practical  side  of  its  affairs 
also,  as  distinct  from  matters  of  dog- 
ma, the  church  has  grave  faults  to 
amend  in  its  conventional  attitude  to- 
wards fashionable  forms  of  commercial 
vice.  So  long  as  our  supposed  teachers 
of  righteousness,  in  withholding  their 
stinging  denunciations  of  every  foul 


/iDones  Ibunoer  103 

method  of  acquisition,  compound  the 
law-permitted  felonies  of  their  rich 
patrons  or  parishioners,  the  name  of 
religion  will  continue  to  bear  a  more 
sinister  stigma  than  that  of  intransi- 
gence. In  no  other  way  than  by  as- 
suming a  powerfully  organized  and 
uncompromising  attitude  of  denuncia- 
tion upon  the  part  of  its  pulpit,  can 
the  church  as  an  institution  free  itself 
from  the  position  of  complicity  in 
which  it  has  placed  itself,  and  be  able 
to  furnish  its  quota  of  force  to  any 
movement  of  moral  awakening  among 
the  people. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

ITTLE  need  be  added  to  what  has 
already  been  said  regarding  the 
press,  unless  it  be  to  emphasize  the  re- 
sponsibility ceaselessly  resting  upon 
the  shoulders  of  those  who  conduct  so 
fateful  an  enterprise.  So  comparatively 
new  is  the  newspaper,  and  so  uniform- 
ly has  it  been  considered  as  merely  a 
tool  to  be  plied,  like  others,  for  gain, 
that  those  wielding  it  for  the  most  part 
have  felt  little  or  no  concern  for  the 
consequences  to  the  public  of  its  use, 
— an  attitude  of  mind  which  would 
appear  to  lie  at  the  very  root  of  much 
of  the  evil  with  which  the  press  may 
justly  be  charged. 

It  does  not,  however,  seem  proba- 

104 


flDones  Ibunaer  105 

ble  that  such  a  conception  of  the 
status  of  the  press  can  long  continue 
to  survive,  for  so  indubitably  is  it  an 
element  of  our  system  of  government 
that  a  perversion  of  its  use  is  plainly 
no  less  a  moral  crime  than  would 
be  the  maladministration  of  justice. 
Public  policy,  which  in  the  end  in- 
variably brings  under  control  such 
social  menaces  as  from  time  to  time 
arise,  may  eventually  be  trusted  to 
see  to  it,  indirectly  by  the  pressure  of 
opinion  and  directly  by  the  applica- 
tion of  law,  that  the  newspaper  shall 
be  conducted  more  after  the  order 
of  an  agency  which  is  permitted  to 
exist  for  the  public  good,  than  of  an 
enterprise  which  is  run  solely  for 
purposes  of  private  gain,  or  of  personal 
aggrandizement. 
When  viewed  in  the  light  of  its 


io6  /ll>one£  "Ibunocr 


mischievous  manifestations,  it  would 
seem  probable  that  as  much  law  has 
yet  to  be  written  with  respect  to  the 
press,  as  upon  any  other  threatening 
phase  of  activity  by  which  we  are 
confronted.  Meanwhile,  perhaps  it 
would  be  idle  to  commend  the  un- 
selfish exercise  of  public  spirit  to  men 
who  are  intent  upon  the  accumulation 
of  money,  with  hoards  of  it  still  at 
their  feet  to  be  got  for  the  stooping. 
The  moral  and  intellectual  develop- 
ment of  the  community  will  in  all 
probability  have  to  struggle  forward  as 
best  it  may  despite  malevolent  jour- 
nalistic influences  until  such  time  as, 
surfeited  with  the  things  money  com- 
mands, it  shall  occur  to  owners  ot 
newspapers  that  their  greatest  victo- 
ries are  not  to  be  measured  in  the 
figures  of  circulation,  which  are  easiest 


/H>onep  tninaer  107 

to  be  won  by  the  public's  debauching, 
or  their  most  substantial  returns  found 
in  the  amounts  of  advertising  busi- 
ness carried,  which  are  most  readily 
to  be  secured  by  the  betrayal  of  their 
clientele.  Then  they  will  perceive 
that  a  greater  reward  is  the  possession 
of  the  confidence  and  affectionate  re- 
gard of  their  readers,  and  that  these  are 
to  be  had  only  in  return  for  high  public 
service  freely  rendered,  either  in  the 
advocacy  of  movements  which  lift 
men  to  planes  of  clean  living  and 
right  thinking,  or  in  fearless  attacks 
upon  immorality  and  the  interests 
that  prey  upon  those  who  are  its 
victims. 

Only  in  such  ways  may  a  news- 
paper creditably  acquit  itself  of  its 
obligation  to  the  community — an  ob- 
ligation which  the  very    nature  of 


108  /iDones  Dunger 

journalism  lays  upon  those  who  prac- 
tise it — and  by  no  other  means  can  an 
owner  or  writer  ever  become  a  great 
journalist.  Such  a  one  does  not  pride 
himself  on  having  scientifically  ex- 
tracted the  last  dollar  from  every  in- 
terest that  may  possibly  be  got  to 
advertise  ;  nor  on  having  readers  that 
are  legion  hysterically  follow  his 
finger,  this  way  or  that.  Rather  is 
he  eager  to  perceive  his  public's  needs, 
to  formulate  the  movements  of  his 
community,  be  it  local  or  national, 
and  to  direct  them  into  ways  of  ulti- 
mate good.  Ever  ready  and  able  to 
fight  or  help,  to  tear  down  or  build 
up,  he  does  not  hesitate  to  attack  and 
destroy  such  vicious  ideas  as  he  finds 
to  underlie  the  foul  practices  sur- 
rounding him,  however  valiantly  they 
may  be  guarded  by  influential  bene- 


/Ifcones  fmnger  109 

ficiaries.  Nor  does  he  lack  the  neces- 
sary courage,  initiative,  or  genius  to 
open  up  paths  of  new  and  helpful 
thought,  toward  which  the  people  in 
their  progress  ever  are  groping,  but 
which  only  may  be  discerned  in  ad- 
vance by  those  of  profound  intellect. 
Of  such  stuff,  and  no  other,  is  the 
great  journalist ;  and  his  absence  to- 
day is  the  shame  of  journalism, — of 
the  commercialized  journalism  which 
has  bred  him  out  of  existence  by  sub- 
ordinating to  its  desire  for  wealth  or 
political  following  the  intellectual,  the 
humane,  the  sternly  dutiful,  the  un- 
compromisingly insistent  functions 
that  should  make  of  the  press— which 
has  truly  been  called  the  vast  shadow 
of  public  thought— the  safeguard  and 
the  glory  of  modern  democratic  peo- 
ples.    It  is  indeed  an  evil  time  for  any 


no 


flDonc£  TCmnocr 


nation  when  those  who  control  its 
means  of  articulate  expression  stand 
upon  no  higher  plane  of  duty  or 
aspiration  than  do  its  unthinking 
masses. 

It  is  the  fashion  among  newsmen, 
nowadays,  to  smile  pityingly  upon  the 
great  writers  of  the  past,  as  men 
whose  thoughts  were  too  far  above 
1 '  practical "  journalism,  and  who  hon- 
ored overmuch  the  pen,  thinking  it 
mightier,  even,  than  the  symbol  of 
physical  force.  Far  wiser  the  mod- 
ern publisher.  He  has  indeed  found 
means  wherewith  to  harness  to  his 
minting-wheel  or  political  chariot  that 
vaunted  master  of  beaten  plough- 
shares! 

But  eventually  it  must  again  tran- 
spire that  men  will  arise  who  are  great 
enough  to  pluck  the  pen  from  where 


/ifeoncs  Ibunoer  m 


now  it  lies,  among  the  emblems  of 
prostitution,  and  fearlessly  wield  it 
to  dissipate  the  vicious  conceptions 
which  hold  in  thrall  the  moral  in- 
stincts of  a  great  people. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

[N  an  attack  upon  commercial  im- 
*  morality,  perhaps  the  earliest 
results  are  to  be  obtained  from  a 
movement  to  reform  progressively 
such  governmental  policies  as  are  in- 
jurious to  public  morals;  and  to  adjust 
and  apply  the  restraint  of  law  to  those 
ingenious  forms  of  wrong  under 
which  misdealing  is  now  practised 
with  impunity. 

But  at  the  very  outset  of  the  under- 
taking there  lies,  as  a  barrier  to  pro- 
gress, the  expressed  sanction  by  the 
federal  government  of  the  right  of 
special  privilege, — an  evil  which  has 
not  only  thrust  its  pernicious  head 
into  the  halls  of  every  state  and  mu- 

112 


flDonep  Ibunger  113 


nicipal  legislature  of  the  land,  to  the 
general  corruption  of  legislative  ethics, 
but  has  branded  the  consciousness  of 
the  citizen  with  the  monstrous  belief 
that,  so  he  secure  but  influence  to 
set  it  to  work  in  his  behalf,  gov- 
ernment will  make  him  rich.  At 
whose  cost  this  may  be  the  citizen 
cares  not,  so  thoroughly  is  he  imbued 
with  the  idea  that  the  arbitrary  diver- 
sion of  the  wealth  of  one  class  into 
the  pockets  of  another  is  a  just  and 
legitimate  function  of  state;  a  function 
which  may  fairly  be  invoked  by 
whomsoever  is  strong  enough  to  pre- 
vail, without  at  all  involving  the 
questions  of  right  or  wrong. 

Cunningly  sustained  by  those 
whom  it  has  enriched,  written  into 
the  creed  of  a  dominant  political  party, 
falsely  exalted  for  worship  as  of  the 


n4  flDones  ibunoer 

very  essence  of  prosperity — a  pros- 
perity in  reality  resting  upon  the 
uninterrupted  outpouring  of  nature's 
plethoric  resources — the  principle  of 
protection  as  it  has  come  to  be  prac- 
tised is  the  mother  of  our  ruling  vice. 
And  out  of  it  there  has  grown  the  re- 
crudescence of  a  mediaeval  system, 
under  which  one  man  may  purchase 
the  privilege  of  taxing  another. 

The  justiceof  the  principle  of  "prac- 
tical "  protection  once  having  been  ad- 
mitted, it  is  no  far  cry  to  its  general 
employment,  without  the  invocation 
of  legislative  sanction,  as  has  been 
shown  in  the  discriminations  practised 
by  the  common  carriers.  Following 
the  logic  of  privileges  granted  and 
sustained  by  the  state,  and  most  often 
based  upon  these  very  indulgences, 
monopolies  maintained  by  private  in- 


Atones?  ibunoer  115 

itiative  and  skill  have  so  rapidly  arisen 
upon  all  sides  that  it  may  fairly  be  said 
we  now  exist  in  a  condition  of  com- 
mercial feudalism,  in  which  huge  or- 
ganizations exercise,  each  over  its 
particular  domain  of  industry,  the  pre- 
rogatives of  sovereignty. 

The  purpose  of  the  moment,  how- 
ever, is  not  to  discuss  the  economic 
folly  of  the  protective  system,  nor  the 
material  evils  which  are  its  legitimate 
fruits,  but  to  dwell  upon  the  immor- 
ality of  the  consequences  which  follow 
upon  its  teachings,  that  wealth  is  to 
be  got  by  the  manipulation  of  legis- 
lation, that  the  manipulation  of  legis- 
lation is  to  be  accomplished  through 
the  possession  of  legislative  influence, 
that  legislative  influence  is  to  be  had 
for  money,  or  for  purchasable  favors. 
In  these  few  words  are  mapped  the 


n6  /iDonev?  ftmnoer 


rottenest  borrowings  which  underlie 
our  political  and  commercial  activities; 
and  it  cannot  be  denied  that  protec- 
tionism, as  we  have  reduced  it  to  prac- 
tise, has  had  a  most  disastrous  effect 
upon  the  morals  of  both. 

It  should  ever  have  been  obvious 
that  the  fewer  and  smaller  the  favors 
which  a  government  is  empowered 
to  grant  the  higher  will  be  the  po- 
litical and  commercial  morality  of  its 
people,  and  the  more  profound  will 
be  their  respect  for  its  law.  Never- 
theless, any  one  who  shall  seriously 
suggest  the  inclusion  of  morality,  at 
the  cost  of  privilege,  among  the  ma- 
terials which  ought  to  be  wrought 
into  the  fabric  of  our  industrial  pol- 
icy, will  inevitably  be  greeted  with 
universal  derision.  So  thoroughly 
accustomed  are  we  to  easy  paths  to 


flDones  ftmnoer  117 

wealth,  that  unconsciously  we  have 
come  to  regard  even  the  characteristic 
of  scrupulous  personal  integrity  as  not 
only  no  longer  an  asset  in  practical 
affairs,  but  rather,  when  it  affects  the 
vital  matter  of  gain,  as  an  expression 
of  puerile  squeamishness  worthy  of 
contempt. 

Nevertheless,  invulnerable  as  may 
now  seem  the  barriers  confronting  at- 
tack in  any  assault  upon  the  unsound 
moral  practises  which  have  wound 
themselves  into  or  about  our  national 
policies,  it  is  not  to  be  believed 
that  statesmanship  long  can  fail  to 
grasp  the  opportunity  which  now  lies 
before  it.  For  it  has  but  to  propose  the 
elimination  from  governmental  policy 
of  protective  grants  to  find  that  it  has 
at  once  forged  into  a  single  weapon 
the  issues  of  a  moral  betterment,of  the 


n8  flDonq?  Ibunocr 


breaking  down  of  the  grossest  forms  of 
monopoly,  and  of  the  multiplication  of 
commercial  possibilities  with  its  re- 
sulting industrial  ease  and  security. 

It  is  indeed  a  fortunate  circumstance 
that  the  very  hunger  of  the  people  for 
material  advantage,  which  now  so 
ruthlessly  thrusts  aside  uncomfortable 
moral  restraints,  is  so  near  to  enlist- 
ment in  the  cause  of  moral  regenera- 
tion: for  at  no  distant  day  those  who 
possess  it  must  awake  to  the  practical 
benefits  to  be  got  by  throwing  off  the 
now  wastefully-taxing,  trade-abridg- 
ing impost  system,  which  is  the 
heavily  felt,  though  as  yet  but  par- 
tially detected,  burden  of  the  American 
people. 


CHAPTER  XV 

A  NATURAL  consequence  of  mod- 
ern industrial  development  has 
been  the  creation  of  the  corporation, 
by  means  of  which  many  individuals 
may  combine,  with  limited  responsi- 
bilities, to  conduct  an  enterprise.  It  is 
a  purely  artificial  structure,  authorized 
by  the  people  at  large,  and  in  no  sense 
partakes  of  the  natural  status  of  the 
individual  citizen,  who  is  a  physical 
part  of  the  state  itself,  and  for  whose 
protection,  solely,  government  itself 
exists.  That  is  to  say,  the  rights  of 
the  individual  are  natural  obligations 
necessarily  assumed  by  the  state ; 
while  those  of  the  corporation  are 

artificial  privileges  conferred  by  the 

119 


120  flDones  ifounoer 

state  upon  a  collection  of  individuals, 
who  in  return  are  expressly  obligated 
to  the  people  for  the  proper  use  of  the 
powers  conferred.  A  statement  of 
these  elementary  truths  is  made  ne- 
cessary by  a  prevailing  confusion  of 
thought  with  respect  to  the  compara- 
tive prerogatives  of  those  who  en- 
joy the  advantages  which  come  of 
co-operative  association  devoid  of 
personal  responsibility,  and  of  the  in- 
dividual, who,  standing  alone  upon 
his  own  resources,  must  answer  with 
his  person  for  his  acts. 

No  legal  creation  of  the  people 
should  be  permitted  to  grow  beyond 
the  power  of  the  people  to  control  it : 
nevertheless,  through  his  legislative 
grant,  unwisely  unaccompanied  by 
checks  adequate  to  safeguard  his  in- 
terests, the  citizen,  in  opposing  the 


/IDones  Ibunaer  121 


aggressive  corporation,  seems  to  be 
helplessly  confronting  a  Frankenstein, 
whom  he  has  himself  conjured  into 
being. 

In  formulating  the  status  of  the  cor- 
poration, it  is  evident  that  government 
everywhere  in  the  United  States  has 
grossly  underestimated  the  phenome- 
nal faculty  for  organization  which  is  so 
predominant  a  feature  of  the  American 
character.  Otherwise  it  is  scarcely 
to  be  believed  that  so  tremendous  an 
engine  for  the  application  of  this  par- 
ticular phase  of  its  power  would  have 
been  put  at  the  disposal  of  American 
genius,  unless  there  remained  in  the 
hands  of  the  people  effective  means 
for  its  supervision  and  control.  In- 
deed, it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that 
had  there  been  foreseen  the  evils 
which  have  grown  out  of  the  general 


122  Aboneg  ibunoer 

abuse  of  corporate  power,  and  of  the 
abuse  of  the  interests  of  shareholders 
by  those  who  conduct  their  affairs,  re- 
strictions would  inevitably  have  been 
attached  to  the  management  of  corpo- 
rate enterprises  which  undoubtedly 
would  have  left  us  not  only  a  more 
contented  and  law-abiding  people, 
but  also  upon  a  vastly  higher  plane 
of  commercial  morality.  None  but 
the  most  superficial  observer  of  the 
trend  of  popular  thought  during  the 
past  two  years  can  fail  to  have  noted 
a  general  awakening  to  this  oversight, 
and  the  growth  of  a  determination  on 
the  part  of  the  people  to  apply  strin- 
gent remedial  measures.  What  these 
are  likely  to  be  with  respect  to  public 
service  corporations  in  a  measure  has 
begun  to  appear ;  but  no  formula 
suitable  for  universal   application  to 


/iDoneE  fmnger  123 

all  forms  of  corporate  activity  has 
yet  been  successfully  devised. 

Those  who  propose  that  the  cor- 
poration shall  be  compelled  to  con- 
duct its  affairs  somewhat  in  the  sight 
of  the  public,  probably  foreshadow 
the  regulations  to  which  in  future  it 
will  have  to  subject  itself;  but  only 
an  optimist  unacquainted  with  the 
possible  tergiversations  of  accounting 
can  hope  for  much  gain  from  any  form 
of  publicity  which  does  not  reveal  the 
corporation  actually  at  work. 

While  at  this  time  it  would  be  haz- 
ardous to  say  at  what  precise  step  in 
its  development  regulation  by  dis- 
closure is  likely  fully  to  counteract 
corporate  evils,  nevertheless,  having 
in  view  the  cases  of  maladministration 
which  may  be  cited  from  recent  his- 
tory, it  would  be  instructive  to  note  the 


i24  /B>one£  Ifounger 

effect  were  a  highly  developed  form  of 
publicity  to  be  applied  to  the  affairs  of 
the  modern  corporation.  Conceive  for 
example  a  statute,  relentlessly  en- 
forced, under  which  a  corporation,  its 
officers  being  liable  in  heavy  criminal 
penalties  for  nonfulfilment,  is  bound 
semi-annually  to  issue  to  its  share- 
holders and  the  public  authorities  the 
transactions  in  detail  of  its  various 
governing  bodies,  and  of  its  major  and 
minor  officers ;  and  assume  that  under 
such  a  statute  every  act  of  a  corpora- 
tion to  be  legal  must  be  published  in 
the  manner  prescribed. 

Beneath  such  a  transparent  cover 
could  the  secretly  rebate-fed  oil 
power,  with  its  baneful  ramifications, 
or  its  numberless  imitators,  have  be- 
come impregnable?  Or  is  it  likely  that 
our  insurance  institutions  would  have 


/lDone£  ftunger  125 

fallen  into  their  lately  exposed  and  as 
yet  scarcely  remedied  condition  of 
rottenness  ?  Could  illegal  discrim- 
inatory practices  have  become  the  rule 
among  common  carriers  ?  Or  within 
range  of  the  public's  eye  could  the  di- 
rectorate of  a  great  railway  have 
been  so  manipulated  as  finally  to 
lodge  in  the  hands  of  a  single  indi- 
vidual the  funds  and  credit  in  its 
charge,  to  be  used  at  his  own  discre- 
tion for  purposes  of  speculation  ?  Or 
could  intercorporate  alliance  in  re- 
straint of  competition  and  in  perpetu- 
ation of  monoply  have  come  into 
being  ?  Could  directors  have  manip- 
ulated for  their  own  gain  the  funds  or 
securities  of  their  share  or  policy- 
holders ?  Or,  acting  for  these,  could 
they  well  have  conducted  transactions 
of  purchase  or  sale  from  which  as  in- 


126  flDones  Ibuncjcr 

dividuals  they  themselves  were  fraud- 
ulently to  profit  ?  These  questions 
admit  of  but  the  one  reply:  Publicity 
is  so  abhorrent  to  transactions  of  this 
kind  that  in  its  presence  they  cannot 
exist. 

Indeed,  so  surely  is  full  publicity 
remedial  of  the  various  phases  of 
boardroom  crime,  now  inextinguish- 
able by  other  means,  as  pointedly  to 
suggest  that  the  glass  house  is  the 
only  domicile  in  which  the  American 
corporation  may  safely  be  permitted 
to  work .  And  it  requires  but  little  fore- 
sight to  prophesy  that  eventually  the 
people  will  find  a  way  to  dissipate 
the  existing  obscurity  from  managerial 
chambers  of  conspiracy. 

To  those  who  are  used  to  con- 
sider the  corporation  a  private  enter- 
prise, with  the  affairs  of  which  its 


flDone$  fmnger  12; 


officers  and  owners  alone  have  to 
do,  the  suggestion  of  so  broad  a 
publicity  as  that  suggested  would 
seem  to  propose  a  startling  abro- 
gation of  rights:  but  such  is  not  at 
all  the  case,  for  the  action  of  gov- 
ernment in  creating  the  corporation 
is  primarily  based  upon  the  principle 
that  thereby  two  interests  are  to  be 
served — those  of  the  public,  and  of 
the  individual  participators;  the  first, 
through  its  enjoyment  of  the  better 
facility  for  service  afforded  by  the  en- 
hanced efficiency  of  the  means  of 
the  individual  when  collectively  em- 
ployed; the  second,  by  the  grant,  un- 
der favorable  safeguards,  of  the  use  of 
an  authorized  structure  for  the  prose- 
cution of  co-operative  effort.  There- 
fore, while  government  is  bound 
to  afford  the  corporation  a  definite 


128  flbones  "ibunocr 

measure  ot  protection,  so  also  is  the 
corporation  holden  to  the  people  in 
an  implied  duty  of  obedience  to  the 
spirit  of  the  terms  of  the  grant  which 
it  enjoys.  As  a  natural  corollary,  so  far 
as  are  involved  its  expressed  and  im- 
plied obligations  to  the  state,  the  cor- 
poration is  unable  to  take  itself  beyond 
the  supervisory  jurisdiction  of  the 
power  which  created  and  maintains 
it.  So  if,  by  reason  of  its  habitual  abuse 
of  an  heretofore  enjoyed  immunity 
from  exacting  surveillance,  the  cor- 
poration has  taught  the  people  the 
need  of  subjecting  its  activities  to 
minute  scrutiny,  and  if  such  should 
follow,  it  can  lodge  against  the  state 
no  defensible  charge  of  usurpation. 

It  will  be  claimed  on  behalf  of  the 
corporation  that  a  complete  disclosure 
of  its  affairs  would  be  injurious  to  its 


/IDonep  Ibunocr  129 

legitimate  interests,  and  therefore 
would  place  a  severe  restraint  upon 
corporate  enterprise,  which  would  un- 
favorably react  upon  the  community 
at  large.  While,  admittedly,  under  a 
compulsory  disclosure  of  its  transac- 
tions, corporate  management  would 
have  for  a  time  to  be  prepared  to  meet 
many  inconveniences  (less  onerous, 
however,  than  those  from  which  the 
public  would  have  been  relieved) 
nevertheless,  itfailstoappearhow  such 
a  plan  long  could  work  injury  to  per- 
missible corporate  activities  which  are 
properly  conducted.  It  may  be  con- 
tended that  disclosure  of  its  current 
affairs  would  place  a  corporation  at 
the  mercy  of  its  competitors :  but  if 
these  also  are  corporate  bodies  advan- 
tage and  disadvantage  would  be  eq- 
ualized and  thereby  nullified.    While, 


130  /IDoncv)  Ibumicr 

should  its  competitors  be  individuals, 
the  contention  would  undoubtedly 
have  a  measure  of  weight,  if  but  little 
justice,  for  a  salutary  and  much  needed 
reform  would  have  been  gained,  by 
the  institution  of  a  more  equable  re- 
adjustment of  advantage  as  between 
individual  and  corporation. 

But  the  weighing  of  possible  incon- 
veniences to  which  the  corporation 
may  be  subjected  in  the  process  of 
insuring  a  just  administration  of  its 
affairs,  is  beside  a  discussion  of 
morals ;  and  it  is  upon  the  score  of 
morality,  not  less  than  upon  the 
broad  issue  of  a  better  conservation 
of  the  rights  of  the  people  (rights 
which  are  now  so  shamelessly  vio- 
lated by  what  may  be  termed  the 
corporation-directing  class)  that  the 
pressing  need  of  publicity  exists. 


^iDone^  ibunger  131 


It  is  probable  that  ere  publicity,  in 
a  highly  developed  form,  is  applied 
to  the  extirpation  of  the  root  of  all 
corporate  evil — which  is  control  with 
secrecy — other  remedial  expedients 
in  great  variety  will  have  been 
directed  against  that  evil's  various  off- 
spring. Nevertheless,  however  effi- 
caciously the  various  phases  of  wrong 
may  be  dealt  with,  it  is  certain  that 
no  specific  which  fails  to  correct  the 
underlying  condition  which  invites 
to  the  practise  of  corporate  immoral- 
ity may  safely  be  relied  upon  to 
effect  its  cure. 

No  discussion  of  current  mischiev- 
ous commercial  practices  should  close 
without  a  word  upon  the  attitude  to- 
wards his  principal  which  the  agent 
(trustee  or  director)  has  come  to 
hold.    There  seems  to  have  sprung 


132  flftonev?  ifoungcr 

up  among  those  who  conduct  the  af- 
fairs of  others  a  curious  unwritten  law, 
to  the  effect  that  whatsoever  through 
their  activities  a  trust  may  earn  above 
what  they  are  pleased  to  consider  a 
fair  return  for  its  owner,  an  agent  (trus- 
tee or  director)  may  honorably  retain 
as  his  emolument,  without  the  own- 
er's knowledge  and  consent.  And 
this  notwithstanding  the  fact  that 
the  agent  may  be  in  the  enjoyment 
of  stipulated  compensation.  Such  a 
conception  of  duty  is  prevalent  not 
only  in  the  corporation-directing  class, 
but  is  held,  practised  and  defended 
by  individual  trustees  as  well :  while 
the  writer  has  heard  its  abstract 
justice  seriously  contended  for  by 
disinterested  men — a  delicious  illus- 
tration, indeed,  of  the  extent  to  which 
fiduciary  immorality  has  become  con- 


/IDoneE  Ifounger  133 

ventionalized.  No  longer  need  a  man 
have  cause  to  blush,  save  in  so  far  as 
he  may  have  neglected  to  observe 
the  niceties  of  the  fashionable  forms 
of  polite  thievery. 

Assuredly,  the  criminal  code  should 
be  extended  to  include  the  practices 
of  those  who  in  conducting  the 
affairs  of  others  secretly  profit  by 
the  manipulation  of  them  :  for,  in 
so  far  as  a  trustee  (agent  or  director) 
without  the  knowledge  and  consent 
of  its  owner  retains  or  procures  for 
himself,  through  primary  or  secondary 
channels,  any  portion  of  the  earnings 
of  a  trust,  be  they  great  or  small, 
having  committed  a  larceny,  he 
should  be  made  to  suffer  criminal 
penalty. 

Upon  the  fashioning  of  respectable 
raiment  for  many  another  such  phase 


i34  flDones  fninger 


of  rascality  among  the  well-bred,  is 
custom  now  busily  at  work,  and  it 
behooves  those  who  are  charged  with 
the  enforcement  of  law  drastically 
to  apply  in  each  case  every  legal 
means  of  discouragement.  And  to 
our  chambers  of  legislation  must  be 
sent  men  who  not  only  are  able, 
but  willing,  fearlessly  to  attack  every 
manifestation  of  the  widely  prevalent 
habit  of  fraudulent  sequestration,— a 
practise  which  has  so  cunningly  thrust 
its  roots  into  the  vitals  of  our  indus- 
trial life,  as  to  cause  many  to  regard 
an  assault  upon  it  as  an  attack  upon 
organized  industry  itself. 

It  hardly  requires  to  be  said  that 
it  is  as  impossible  to  legislate  men 
honest  as  it  is  to  legislate  them  happy. 
The  best  in  any  case  that  can  be  done 
by  the  law  is  to  provide  conditions 


/lDonc£  fbuwjer  135 

which  are  more  favorable  to  honesty 
and  justice,  than  to  predatory  selfish- 
ness and  crime.  But  to  every  form 
of  misdeed  there  can  be  inseparably 
attached  such  a  handicap  as  shall 
make  its  fruits  not  worth  the  certain 
costs  of  its  perpetration.  To  accom- 
plish this,  however,  we  must  evince 
a  higher  degree  of  legislative  skill 
than  we  have  hitherto  shown  ;  and 
there  must  be  made  to  prevail  a  more 
upright  and  impartial  administration 
of  the  law  than  is  to  be  expected  of 
men  who  are  bred  of  a  society  sym- 
pathetically tolerant  of  corruption. 

Finally,  it  should  be  said,  no  view 
of  the  likelihood  of  our  moral  better- 
ment can  be  even  approximately  cor- 
rect which  does  not  take  into  account 
the  very  great  obstacles  to  reform 
which  lie  in  our  unquenchable  spirit 


136  flboney  tounger 

of  optimism,  which  reposes  implicit 
confidence  in  the  beneficence  of  the 
natural  course  of  future  events  ;  and 
in  our  supersensitive  national  vanity, 
which  would  rather  hide  or  condone 
a  fault  than  confess  its  existence  by  a 
thoroughgoing  attempt  at  its  eradica- 
tion. The  first,  by  its  denial  of  the 
necessity  of  applied  remedial  action, 
prevents  the  translation  into  deeds  of 
the  impulsive  desire  for  betterment 
which  must  come  to  every  right  think- 
ing man  in  the  presence  of  wrong; 
while  the  second,  by  striving  to  hold 
down  the  blanket  of  secretive  toler- 
ance which  so  long  has  smothered 
the  stench  of  our  commercial  putres- 
cence, serves  but  to  propagate  evil  by 
shielding  it,  and  thereby  prevents  its 
destruction  by  the  drastic  antisepsis  of 
publicity. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

'"THE  question  now  arises,  How  shall 
the  individual  carry  himself,  and 
what  are  his  responsibilities,  when 
confronted  by  generally  accepted  im- 
moral commercial  conditions  to  which 
it  is  expected  that  he  shall  conform, 
or  concerning  which  it  is  required  ot 
him  that  he  shall  at  least  hold  his 
peace  ?  Several  courses  are  open. 
He  may  directly  or  indirectly  par- 
ticipate in  profitable  irregularities  ;  he 
may  refrain  from  engaging  in  them, 
while  encouraging  others  in  their  prac- 
tice by  holding  towards  them  a  toler- 
ant attitude ;  or  he  may  rigidly  exclude 
from  his  activities  all  enterprises,  great 

or   small,   over  which   there   lies  a 

137 


138  flDones  ibunger 

shadow  of  doubt  as  to  their  integrity, 
and  uncompromisingly  reprehend  the 
tendency  in  others,  whether  it  be  in 
speech  or  in  deed,  to  deal  lightly  with 
a  trust  or  with  any  form  of  expressed 
or  implied  obligation. 

It  has  been  abundantly  shown 
that  practitioners  of  commercial  vice, 
in  all  its  variety,  thrive  principally 
by  means  of  the  tolerance  of  a  large 
and  influential  element  among  the 
people,  an  element  which  has  grown 
to  regard  the  pursuit  of  wealth  as 
an  activity  from  which  nice  ques- 
tions of  integrity  may  with  propriety 
be  excluded.  As  both  these  classes, 
which  may  be  termed  the  positive  and 
negative  agents  of  immorality,  have 
already  been  adequately  dealt  with, 
there  remains  to  be  pointed  out  but 
the  nature  of  the  unavoidable  duty 


/iDone^  Ifounaer  139 


which  rests  upon  those  who,  being  in 
touch  with  modern  commercial  con- 
ditions, neither  practise  nor  condone 
their  faults. 

It  is  to  the  latter  class  that  we  must 
look  for  a  renewal  of  moral  impetus; 
for  the  inauguration  of  an  irresistible 
movement  to  put  to  shame  not  only 
those  who  excuse  the  cheat,  the  petty 
pilferer,  the  chevalier  de  V  Industrie, 
the  double-dealer,  the  venal  politician, 
and  the  grafter;  but  those,  as  well, who 
admire  or  tolerate  the  favor-huxter- 
ing  political  boss,  the  trustee  who 
sweats  the  earnings  of  his  principal, 
the  official  (corporate  or  other)  who 
crookedly  uses  his  office  for  gain,  the 
captain  of  industry  returned  success- 
ful from  pillage  and  the  manipulating 
financier,  who  squeezes  and  wrecks, 
buys,  bloats  and  resells,  to  his  own 


mo  /IDoncv?  Ifounoer 


gain,  the  properties  of  a  multitude  of 
defenceless  investors. 

The  surest  attack  that  can  be  made 
upon  these,  and  the  other  participants 
in  the  riot  of  vice  which  rules  our 
commercial  and  political  life,  is  to  de- 
stroy the  atmosphere  of  adulation  or 
tolerance  in  which  they  now  thrive, 
and  to  arouse  against  them  all  of  the 
people  in  a  movement  of  unrelenting 
hostility  and  contempt. 

Therefore  it  is  incumbent  upon 
every  honest  man,  in  speech  and  in 
deed,  untiringly  to  strive  to  make  of 
honesty  a  manly  trait ;  to  rescue  it 
from  among  the  ideals  which  have 
grown  emasculate,  and  to  restore  to 
it  its  virile,  its  masculine  meaning  of 
fair  play, — of  fair  play  for  the  man 
who  is  absent,  for  the  man  who  is 
weak,  for  the  man  who  trusts,  for  the 


/n>one\?  Dunger  141 

man  who  is  in  another's  power,  or  for 
the  one  less  able.  And  not  less  does 
it  rest  upon  him  so  scathingly  to  stig- 
matize dishonesty  wherever  found 
that  people  shall  grow  to  perceive  in 
its  every  form  foul  play ;  and  to  com- 
prehend that  it  means  playing  the 
game  of  life  with  dirty  hands  and 
with  crooked  weapons;  in  short,  that 
dishonesty  is  not  less  an  offence 
against  manliness  than  is  the  shooting 
of  tethered  game,  or  the  striking  of  a 
man  who  is  down,  or  the  dealing  of  a 
blow  from  behind,  or  the  use  of  loaded 
dice,  or  of  marked  cards.  The  people 
must  be  taught  that  dishonesty  is  un- 
fair play,  and  as  such  is  unsportsman- 
like ;  and  that  it  is  the  single  trait  which 
differentiates  the  welcher  from  the 
sportsman,  the  rogue  from  the  gentle- 
man, the  blackguard  from  the  man. 


142  ADones  Tbumjcr 


The  duties  of  affirmation  and  de- 
nunciation are  urgent  and  imperative, 
and  their  objective  is  not  far  to  seek. 
Nor  is  it  of  questionable  potency; 
for,  once  it  is  lodged  in  the  popular 
mind  that  it  is  as  crooked  to  cheat 
about  a  directors'  board  as  over 
a  card  table,  as  wretchedly  mean  to 
evade  an  obligation  of  business  as  to 
flee  one  incurred  upon  the  turf,  as 
vile  to  wrong  one's  shareholders  as  to 
sell  out  one's  companions  in  a  game, 
as  pitifully  despicable  to  pluck  the 
trust  which  may  happen  to  lie  in 
one's  hand,  as  to  filch  from  the  purse 
one  has  been  asked  for  a  moment  to 
hold, — when  these  truths  are  grasped 
then  there  will  occur  such  a  re- 
vulsion of  feeling  as  shall  thereafter 
exclusively  confine  the  practice  of 
commercial    immorality,    a    form    of 


/IDonev  Ibunoer  143 

which  has  become  almost  an  honored 
prerogative  of  every  class,  strictly  to 
avowedly  criminal  circles. 

To  strive  unceasingly  to  create  this 
change  in  popular  sentiment  is  the 
grave  obligation  which  the  situation 
has  thrust  upon  every  man  who  de- 
sires to  live  honorably  in  a  community 
which,  by  inclination  as  well  as  by 
law,  shall  secure  him  in  the  pursuit 
of  his  legitimate  business  and  pleas- 
ure, and  shall  guard  him  in  his  pos- 
sessions no  less  from  the  ruffian  who 
rides  within  the  law  than  from  the 
outcast  who  skulks  beyond  it. 

Such  is  the  imperative  duty  of  the 
hour;  and  least  of  all  is  it  to  be  shirked 
by  the  man  who  wishes  to  surround 
his  wife  and  children  with  an  atmos- 
phere of  purity,  from  which  they  may 
draw  the  stimulus  of  healthful  and 


144  /n>one£  tmnocr 

invigorating  ideals.  While  he  whose 
patriotism  is  a  living  purpose  to  uphold 
the  dignity  and  make  honorable  the 
title  of  American,  whether  his  position 
be  humble  or  conspicuous,  will  strive 
mightily  to  persuade  his  countrymen 
to  seek  ways  of  betterment,  even 
though  in  so  doing  he  may  have  to 
incur  their  resentment  by  fearlessly 
disclosing  their  faults. 


THE  END 


